André Kertész
[Photographer, b. 1894, Budapest, Hungary, d. 1985, New York.]
Have confidence in the inventions and transformations of chance.
Frederick Sommer
[Photographer, b. 1905, Angri, Italy, d. 1999, Prescott, Arizona.]
Poetic and speculative photographs can result if one works carefully and accurately, yet letting chance relationships have full play.
Peter Henry Emerson
[Writer and photographer, b. 1856, LaPalma, Cuba, d. 1936, Falmouth, Cornwall, England.]
No haphazard work, but complete control, so that we can mould the picture according to our will.
(Credo)
Luc Sante
[Writer, b. 1954, Verviers, Belgium, lives in Ulster County, New York.]
Unlike a bow and arrow, a camera by its nature ensures that some kind of target will always be hit, if not necessarily the intended target nor in the intended way.
William Klein
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, lives in Paris.]
I had neither training nor complexes. By necessity and choice, I decided that anything would have to go. A technique of no taboos: blur, grain, contrast, cock-eyed framing, accidents, whatever happens.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
I’m not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It’s drowning yourself, dissolving yourself and then sniff, sniff, sniff—being sensitive to coincidence. You can’t go looking for it; you can’t want it, or you won’t get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens.
Robert Frank
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1924, Zürich, Switzerland, lives in Mabou, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and New York.]
I love mistakes in photography. Sometimes they work.
Ray Metzker
[Photographer, b. 1931, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, d. 2014, Philadelphia.]
What appears in the pictures was the subject’s decision, not mine. I took what they presented—delicate moments—unadorned and unglamorous, yet tender and exquisite.
