Margaret Bourke-White
[Photographer, b. 1904, New York, d. 1971, Darien, Connecticut.]
Of course, I am at the very core a photographer. It is my trade—and my deep joy.
Andres Serrano
[Artist, b. 1950, New York, lives in New York.]
I’ve always understood the nature of conflict and duality, so I don’t have a problem with the duality of images and the fact that they can blow hot and cold or be seductive and critical at the same time.
Frederick H. Evans
[Photographer and bookseller, b. 1853, London, d. 1943, London.]
A perfect photograph is one that perfectly records, reflects its subject, gives its beholder the same order of joy as the original would.
(1908)
Claude Lévi-Strauss
[Anthropologist, b. 1908, Brussels, Belgium, d. 2009, Paris.]
How can my old photographs fail to create in me a feeling of emptiness and sorrow? They make me acutely aware that this second deprivation will be final this time…
Sally Mann
[Photographer, b. 1951, Lexington, Virginia, lives in Lexington.]
Each good picture always holds despair within it, for it raises the ante for the ones that follow.
Marc Riboud
[Photographer, b. 1923, St.-Genis-Laval, France, d. 2016, Paris.]
Doubt always hovers nearby, but I take photographs the way a musician hums. Looking is like breathing. So when luck turns my way and offers me a good picture, joy is surely nigh.
Robert Frank
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1924, Zürich, Switzerland, lives in Mabou, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and New York.]
I think I always had a cold eye. I always saw things realistically. But, it’s also easier to show the darkness than the joy of life. Life is not beautiful all the time. Life can be good, then you lie down, and stare up at the ceiling, and the sadness falls on you. Things move on, time passes, people go away, and sometimes they don’t come back.
John Divola
[Photographer, b. 1949, Los Angeles, lives in Los Angeles.]
In all my work there’s this notion of the melancholic. You can make a photograph about the sublime, but you can’t make the sublime itself.
