Elizabeth Barrett Browning
[Poet, b. 1806, Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England, d. 1861, Florence, Italy.]
I long to have such a memorial of every being dear to me in the world. It is not merely the likeness which is precious in such cases—but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing... the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I think—and it is not at all monstrous in me to say, what my brothers cry out against so vehemently, that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest artist’s work ever produced.
(1843) 
Hiroshi Hamaya
[Photographer, b. 1915, Tokyo, Japan, d. 1999, Kanagawa, Japan.]
The subject I liked best was painting, but the teachers didn't approve of my experiments and sometimes criticized me in front of the whole class. Maybe my love for photography came from that humiliation: a photo is something that you develop and print yourself, in the dark, and that remains in the dark until you decide to show it. Alfred Stieglitz
[Photographer and curator, b. 1864, Hoboken, New Jersey, d. 1946, New York.]
Let me here call attention to one of the most universally popular mistakes that have to do with photography—that of classing supposedly excellent work as professional, and using the term amateur to convey the idea of immature productions and to excuse atrociously poor photographs. As a matter of fact nearly all the greatest work is being, and has always been done, by those who are following photography for the love of it, and not merely for financial reasons. As the name implies, an amateur is one who works for love; and viewed in this light the incorrectness of the popular classification is readily apparent. Julia Margaret Cameron
[Photographer, b. 1815, Calcutta, India, d. 1879, Kalutara, Ceylon.]
From the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour, and it has become to me as a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigour. Alfred Stieglitz
[Photographer and curator, b. 1864, Hoboken, New Jersey, d. 1946, New York.]
The camera was waiting for me by predestination and I took to it as a musician takes to the piano or a painter to the canvas. I went to photography really a free soul—and loved it at first sight with a great passion. Michael Lesy
[Writer and artist, b. 1945, Shaker Heights, Ohio, lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.]
By itself, an ordinary snapshot is no less banal than the petite madeleine in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time… but as goad to memory, it is often the first integer in a sequence of recollections that has the power to deny time for the sake of love. Ogden Nash
[Poet and humorist, b. 1902, Rye, New York, d. 1971, Baltimore, Maryland.]
Some hate broccoli, some hate baconI hate having my picture taken.
How can your family claim to love you
And then demand a picture of you?
Vincent Van Gogh
[Artist, b. 1853, Zundert, Netherlands, d. 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, France.]
I always think photographs abominable, and I don’t like to have them around, particularly not those of persons I know and love... photographic portraits wither much sooner than we ourselves do, whereas the painted portrait is a thing which is felt, done with love or respect for the human being that is portrayed.