Diane Arbus
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 1971, New York.]
Meanwhile, please get me permissions, both posh and sordid... The more the merrier. We can’t tell in advance where the most interesting photographs will be. I can only get photographs by photographing. I will go anywhere.
(To Esquire magazine, 1959) 
Robert Adams
[Photographer and writer, b. 1937, Orange, New Jersey, lives in Astoria, Oregon.]
When photographers get beyond copying the achievements of others, or just repeating their own accidental first successes, they learn that they do not know where in the world they will find pictures. Nobody does.
Paul Graham
[Photographer, b. 1956, Stafford, England, lives in New York.]
All photographers hope to have some idea of what they’re hoping to find when they go out to shoot, but you have to be open to what the world throws at you, and engage with how it challenges and transforms your original idea.
John Szarkowski
[Curator, critic, historian, and photographer, b. 1925, Ashland, Wisconsin, d. 2007, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.]
[Writers on photography have] difficulty in accepting the fact that luck is a great and powerful force in photography; we tend to be interested only in intention, because it makes the enterprise feel more important.
Jan Dibbets
[Artist, b. 1941, Weert, The Netherlands, lives in Amsterdam.]
I really believe in having projects which in fact can’t be carried out, or which are so simple that anyone could work them out. I once made four spots on the map of Holland, without knowing where they were. Then I found out how to get there and went to the place and took a snapshot. Quite stupid. Anybody can do that.
Philip-Lorca diCorcia
[Artist, b. 1953, Hartford, Connecticut, lives in New York.]
In the beginning of my photography I controlled everything: rearranging the room, lighting it, and telling people what to do and where to put their hands. By the last project, I was basically totally at the mercy of serendipity.
Janet Malcolm
[Writer, b. 1934, Prague, Czechoslovakia, lives in New York.]
The heavy odds against finding the desired… work of art in the mess and flux of life, as opposed to the serene orderliness of imagined reality, give a special tense dazzle and an atmosphere of tour de force to any photographs that succeed in the search.
Gore Vidal
[Writer, b. 1925, West Point, New York, lives in Ravello, Italy and Los Angeles.]
For half a century photography has been the “art form” of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are more satisfactory than others, but where is credit due? To the designer of the camera? To the finger on the button? To the law of averages?
