Lisette Model
[Photographer, b. 1906, Vienna, Austria, d. 1983, New York.]
New images surround us everywhere. They are invisible only because of sterile routine convention and fear. To find these images is to dare to see, to be aware of what there is and how it is. The photographer not only gets information, he gives information about life.
Ernst Haas
[Photographer, b. 1921, Vienna, Austria, d. 1986, New York City.]
Women held bleached-out photographs in the air to the new arrivals. “Do you know him? Have you seen my son?” They called out the names of their men. Children with pictures of fathers they had never seen compared the photographs with the faces of the arrivals. It was almost too much. I staggered home as if in a trance.
(On photographing the return of WWII prisoners from the camps in eastern Europe.)
Corinne Day
[Photographer, b. 1962, Ealing, West London, d. 2010, Denham, England.]
[My brain tumor] was like a bungee jump into hell, like falling and falling forever. It was terrifying, I gave Mark my camera, and told him, “Photograph everything.”
Tina Barney
[Photographer, b. 1945, New York, lives in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, and New York.]
Is this fear of the inevitability of that final, drastic loneliness what instigated this obsessively frantic insistence to mark every living inch of life so as to not miss one detail? And with a stubbornness that I was born with, I demand that you take notice, and not look over, and never forget.
Philippe Halsman
[Photographer, b. 1906, Riga, Latvia, d. 1979, New York.]
I assure you that often, before approaching the person, my heart would beat, and I would have to fight down all my inhibitions in order to address this request to my subject. At every time when the subject agreed to jump, it was for me like a kind of victory.
Susie Bright
[Writer, feminist, and activist, b. 1958, Arlington, Virginia, lives in Santa Cruz, California.]
Seeing lesbian photography is just the tip of my radicalized clitoris. I have modeled for, commissioned, published, and fought for these pictures, and answered threats against them. I’ve seen the feminist movement bring these pictures to life, and I’ve seen that same movement try to suppress the liberating results.
Robert Mapplethorpe
[Photographer, b. 1946, Floral Park, Long Island, d. 1989, Boston, Massachusetts.]
I just hope I can live long enough to see the fame.
Ruth Bernhard
[Photographer, b. 1905, Berlin, d. 2006, San Francisco.]
I always said “yes” to everything.
