Lucy Lippard
[Critic and writer, b. 1936, New York, lives in Galisteo, New Mexico.]
The camera was another weapon in the wars of domination.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
The camera doesn’t rape, or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate—all activities that, unlike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment.
Louis Aragon
[Artist, poet, and writer, b. 1897, Neuilly, France, d. 1982, Paris.]
For each man there awaits... a particular image capable of annihilating the entire universe.
William Burroughs
[Writer, b. 1914, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1997, Lawrence, Kansas.]
Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine —
John Steinbeck
[Writer, b. 1902, Salinas, California, d. 1968, Sag Harbor, New York.]
The camera is one of the most frightening of modern weapons, particularly to people who have been in warfare, who have been bombed and shelled for at the back of a bombing run is invariably a photograph. In the back of ruined towns, and cities, and factories, there is aerial mapping, or spy mapping, usually with a camera. Therefore the camera is a feared instrument, and a man with a camera is suspected and watched wherever he goes... In the minds of most people today the camera is the forerunner of destruction, and it is suspected, and rightly so.
Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
Get Weston off your back, forget Arbus, Frank, Adams, White, don’t look at photographs. Kill the Buddha.
Mariko Mori
[Artist and photographer, b. 1967, Tokyo, Japan, lives in New York.]
I must create the world in order to breathe in the world; I don’t exist unless I create.
Roger Ballen
[Photographer, b. 1950, New York, lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.]
Nothing is staged. And nothing is already there. Everything is transformed through the camera.
