John Szarkowski
[Curator, critic, historian, and photographer, b. 1925, Ashland, Wisconsin, d. 2007, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.]
To photograph beautifully a choice vestigial remnant of natural landscape is not necessarily to do a great favor to its future.... It is difficult today for an ambitious young photographer to photograph a pristine snowcapped mountain without including the parking lot in the foreground as a self-protecting note of irony.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
Imperfect technique has come to be appreciated precisely because it breaks the sedate equation of Nature and
Beauty.
Nadav Kander
[Photographer, b. 1961, Tel Aviv, lives in London.]
Just showing positive, expected images of beauty and airbrushing away the conditions that make us human seems like a deception to me.
Justine Kurland
[Photographer, b. 1969, Warsaw, New York, lives mostly on the road.]
The naked figures in the landscape have willingly undressed for my camera. They are either perfect beings heroically occupying their Edens, or else they are gardeners after the Fall, lost and exposed to both the elements and the lens.
Lisette Model
[Photographer, b. 1906, Vienna, Austria, d. 1983, New York.]
[The snapshooter’s] pictures have an apparent disorder and imperfection, which is exactly their appeal and their style. The picture isn’t straight. It isn’t done well. It isn’t composed. It isn’t thought out. And out of this imbalance, and out of this not knowing, and out of this real innocence toward the medium comes an enormous vitality and expression of life.
Gerhard Richter
[Artist, b. 1932, Dresden, lives in Düsseldorf.]
The photograph is the most perfect picture. It does not change; it is absolute, and therefore autonomous, unconditional, devoid of style.
Leonard Freed
[Photographer, b. 1929, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2006, Garrison, New York.]
…a good photograph must have the element of good design: Everything within the photograph has to be essential. It’s never like a painting where you can have it perfect. It shouldn’t be absolutely perfect. That would kill it.
William Klein
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, lives in Paris.]
With all these so-called great photographers—Cartier-Bresson and Doisneau—everything is so hunky dory.
