Alexandre Dumas
[Writer, b. 1802, Villers-Cotterêts, France, d. 1870, Puys, France.]

 In fact, what are the results of photography? I have already mentioned the merit, that of disfiguring the human race, already ugly enough as it is. Then, of producing a class of false artists, composed in general of those who had not the ability to become painters; they make themselves photographers. (1866) 

Jean-François Chevrier
[Art historian, critic, and curator, b. 1954, Lyon, France, lives in Paris.]

 Many artists, having assimilated the Conceptualists’ explorations to varying degrees, have reused the painterly model and use photography, quite consciously and systematically, to produce works that stand alone and exist as “photographic paintings”... 

Jeff Wall
[Photographer, b. 1946, Vancouver, Canada, lives in Vancouver.]

 I’ve always felt that good art has to reflect somehow on its own process of coming to be. 

Andreas Gursky
[Photographer, b. 1955, Leipzig, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf.]

 In retrospect I can see that my desire to create abstractions has become more and more radical. Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what’s behind something. 

Cindy Sherman
[Artist, b. 1954, Glen Ridge, New Jersey, lives in New York.]

 One reason I was interested in photography was to get away from the preciousness of the art object. 

Jan Saudek
[Photographer, b. 1935, Prague, Czechoslovakia, lives in Prague.]

 I believe all artists, if they are not lying to themselves, must believe that the best part of their work, or even their life, is in front of them. To look only to the past and to say “those were the best years, when I was young” is to say that in the future there is nothing. 

Barbara Kruger
[Artist, b. 1945, Newark, New Jersey, lives in New York.]

 I worked with someone else’s photos; I cropped them in whatever way I wanted and put words on top of them. I knew how to do it with my eyes closed. Why couldn’t that be my art? 

Paul Caponigro
[Photographer, b. 1932, Boston, Massachusetts, lives in Cushing, Maine.]

 Photography’s potential as a great image-maker and communicator is really no different from the same potential in the best poetry where familiar, everyday words, placed within a special context, can soar above the intellect and touch subtle reality in a unique way. 
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