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.
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.
William Burroughs
[Writer, b. 1914, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1997, Lawrence, Kansas.]
There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit.
Larry Clark
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1943, Tulsa, Oklahoma, lives in New York.]
since I became a photographer I always wanted to turn back the year. always wished I had a camera when I was a boy. fucking in the backseat, gangbanging with the pretty girls all the other girls in the neighborhood hated.
Annie Sprinkle (Ellen Steinberg)
[Artist, writer, pornographer, educator, b. 1954, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, lives in Santa Cruz, California.]
I’ve been putting out sexually explicit images of myself for years. I know this sounds bizarre, but somehow it makes me feel safer.
Margaret Atwood
[Writer, b. 1939, Ottawa, Canada, lives in Toronto.]
Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines.
Joel-Peter Witkin
[Photographer, b. 1939, Brooklyn, New York, lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.]
I had met these people the night before at the S and M club, and had convinced them to be photographed. When all was ready, this one said “Mr. Witkin, I don’t want to show my thing. Is there any way we can make it be there without showing it?” I just shouted, “Get the fuck on the set”—so he acted submissive and kind of liked it. But the guy who was to put the blade into his cock started complaining: “I can’t reach this.” So I screamed, “You just have to.” I was kind of nervous. I’d been working all night to set everything up.
Edward Weston
[Photographer, b. 1886, Highland Park, Illinois, d. 1958, Wildcat Hill, California.]
I am having another reaction, from my statement that I could go through life with one woman! Ridiculous thought! Imagine never again having the thrill of courting,—the conquest,—new lips to find,—new bodies to caress. It would be analogous to making my last print, nailing it to the wall forever, seeing it there, until I would despise it or no longer notice it was there.
