Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
Sometimes the pictures disappear and there’s nothing you can do. You can’t tell the person, “Oh, please smile again. Do that gesture again.” Life is once, forever.
Herb Ritts
[Photographer, b. 1952, Los Angeles, d. 2002, Los Angeles.]
To me it’s just going for the moment that counts. Sometimes, I’ll have all the elements there, and I like to play and push something, and to me, in the end, you do achieve things that you’re not aware of in the beginning, even though you’re there trying to get them.
Ansel Adams
[Photographer, b. 1902, San Francisco, d. 1984, Carmel, California.]
Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.
Walter Benjamin
[Philosopher, critic, and theorist, b. 1892, Berlin, d. 1940, Port Bou, France.]
However skillful the photographer, however carefully he poses his model, the spectator feels an irresistible compulsion to look for the tiny spark of chance, of the here and now, with which reality has, as it were, seared the character in the picture; to find that imperceptible point at which, in the immediacy of that long-past moment, the future so persuasively inserts itself that, looking back, we may rediscover it.
Elliott Erwitt
[Photographer, b. 1928, Paris, France, lives in New York.]
After following the crowd for a while, I’d then go 180 degrees in the exact opposite direction. It always worked for me, but then again, I’m very lucky.
Lee Friedlander
[Photographer, b. 1934, Aberdeen, Washington, lives in New York.]
I only wanted Uncle Vern standing by his new car (a Hudson) on a clear day. I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on a fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and seventy-eight trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.
Ray Metzker
[Photographer, b. 1931, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, d. 2014, Philadelphia.]
Why one picture stands out among many others is always a mystery. In the beginning the subject is never quite known, but in the course of working something shows up on the film or in the print that speaks to me. I can never predict when this will happen. However, when it does there is an excitement—there is the ecstasy of recognition. And this is one of the things that keeps me going.
Nan Goldin
[Photographer, b. 1953, Washington, D.C., lives in New York and Paris.]
If you took a million pictures you were lucky to come out with one or two gems.
