Paul Outerbridge
[Photographer, b. 1896, New York, d. 1958, Laguna Beach, California.]
If exposure of a nude body is thought to incite relations between the sexes, well, what of it. We want a large population anyway.
Lewis Mumford
[Writer and critic, b. 1895, Flushing, New York, d. 1990, New York.]
It was Stieglitz’s endeavor... to translate the unseen world of tactile values as they develop between lovers not merely into the sexual act but the entire relation of two personalities—to translate this world of blind touch into sight.
Larry Clark
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1943, Tulsa, Oklahoma, lives in New York.]
It’s like, I call myself a moralist and my friends fall down laughing. But it’s true! Look at the work—everyone always comments on the photo in
Tulsa of a pregnant girl shooting up, like it’s exploitative. Look at the next photo! It’s a funeral. Of a dead baby. I’m always trying to get at the consequences of actions. And if it’s titillating? Well, sometimes I’m dealing with good-looking people having sex, sure, but that’s not the point. The point is the consequences.
Robert Doisneau
[Photographer, b. 1912, Gentilly, Val-de-Marne, France, d. 1994, Montrouge, France.]
It’s superficial, easy to sell,
une image pute, a prostituted picture.
(On his image Le Baiser de le Hotel de Ville—
“The Kiss in Front of City Hall.”)
Jesse Helms
[Politician and U.S. senator, b. 1921, Monroe, North Carolina, d. 2008, Raleigh, North Carolina.]
There is a big difference between
The Merchant of Venice and a photograph of two males of different races in an erotic pose on a marble table top.
Philip Jones Griffiths
[Photojournalist, b. 1936, Rhuddian, Wales, d. 2008, London.]
I’ve always understood the “decisive moment” to be the moment in which one captures the significance of a situation, and yes, in the blink of an eye. When one achieves this, looking through the viewfinder, the reward is an on-the-spot confirmation that amounts to a visual orgasm.
Adam Gopnik
[Writer and critic, b. 1956, Philadelphia, lives in New York.]
... a fact about photography: we can look at people’s faces in photographs with an intensity and intimacy that in life we normally only reserve for extreme emotional states—for a first look at someone we may sleep with, or a last look at someone we love.
Man Ray (Emanuel Radnitsky)
[Artist, b. 1890, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, d. 1976, Paris.]
Were it not for the fact that photography permits me to seize and to possess the human body and face in more than a temporary manner, I should quickly have tired of this medium.
