Nhem En
[Photographer, b. 1961, Kampong Leng, Kampong Chhnang, Cambodia, lives in Cambodia.]
It was difficult to take pictures of the newcomers who were blindfolded and tied up when they were leaving the truck. Sometimes they arrived in chains. Sometimes we got reprimanded; for example, if we took a picture of A and the photo was not good and A was already killed, then we were charged as the enemy.
(En, official photographer at Khmer Rouge torture center Tuol Sleng, estimates he took photographs of 10,000 people arriving at the center. Eight survived.) 
Harold Evans
[Writer and editor, b. 1928, Manchester, England, lives in New York.]
People were murdered for the camera; and some photographers and a television camera crew departed without taking a picture in the hope that in the absence of cameramen acts might not be committed. Others felt that the mob was beyond appeal to mercy. They stayed and won Pulitzer Prizes. Were they right?
Catherine Opie
[Photographer, b. 1961, Sandusky, Ohio, lives in Los Angeles.]
I wanted to push the whole realm of beauty and elegance, but also to make people scared out of their wits.
Dennis Hopper
[Actor, artist, and photographer, b. 1936, Dodge City, Kansas, d. 2010, Venice, California.]
I was very shy, and it was a lot easier for me to communicate if I had a camera between me and other people.
Andrea Modica
[Photographer, b. 1960, Oneonta, New York, lives in Manitou Springs, Colorado.]
Sometimes something is so frightening I must look at it this closely or dismiss it altogether. Sometimes it’s so stunningly beautiful I feel completely left out. With either extreme, photographing makes me have to deal with it.
W. Eugene Smith
[Photographer, b. 1918, Wichita, Kansas, d. 1978, Tucson, Arizona.]
Most photographers seem to operate with a pane of glass between themselves and their subjects. They just can’t get inside and know the subject.
Hu?nh Công “Nick” Ut
[Photographer, b. 1951, rural Mekong Delta, province of Long An, Vietnam, lives in Los Angeles.]
Nick see her skin coming off and stopped [taking photographs]. I didn’t want her to die too.
(On stopping photography in order to take napalmed child Kim Phuc to the hospital after her village of Trang Bang, Vietnam was bombed in 1972.)
Rosalind Fox Solomon
[Photographer, b. 1930, Highland Park, Illinois, lives in New York.]
When I flew away, I was on my own. And that was part of the lure. I left behind my daily life and I landed wherever I landed. The risks that I took led me into the most amazing experiences of my life and gave me freedom to photograph whatever attracted me.
