Frederick H. Evans
[Photographer and bookseller, b. 1853, London, d. 1943, London.]

 A perfect photograph is one that perfectly records, reflects its subject, gives its beholder the same order of joy as the original would. (1908) 

Joan Fontcuberta
[Photographer, b. 1955, Barcelona, lives in Barcelona.]

 Photography mirrored the [nineteenth century] will towards rigor, towards defining details, the need for miniscule description, the long-distance optics, for technology at the service of truth, for concepts of credibility, of objectivity, the need to archive, for the consolidation of institutions like the museum, in short, towards a need to control memory... 

Lady Elizabeth Eastlake (Elizabeth Rigby)
[Writer and photographer, b. 1809, London, d. 1893, London.]

 The small attempts at architecture have swelled into monumental representations of a magnitude, truth, and beauty which no art can surpass—animals, flowers, pictures, engravings, all come within the grasp of the photographer; and last, and finest, and most interesting of all, the sky with its shifting clouds, and the sea with its heaving waves, are overtaken in their course by a power more rapid than themselves. (1857) 

Christian Boltanski
[Artist, b. 1944, Paris, lives in Paris.]

 I had a score to settle with my childhood. The refusal to die was identified with the refusal to grow up, to become an adult. I wanted to show that situation as clearly as possible. Don’t forget my artistic sensibility derives from my personal mythology. What better medium could I have found, at the time, than photography, which seduced me as a “means” for capturing “truth.” 

Roger Ballen
[Photographer, b. 1950, New York, lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.]

 You can’t just set things up and photograph them and expect the picture to “zap.” It is very important that the mind feels that there is a moment of truth or a moment of authenticity. It’s really crucial, because if the artist’s hand is seen as too strong, the pictures seem either dead or contrived. 

Philippe Halsman
[Photographer, b. 1906, Riga, Latvia, d. 1979, New York.]

 When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears. 

Roger Ballen
[Photographer, b. 1950, New York, lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.]

 The essence of photography is freezing minute periods of time. The mind has to believe that you’ve captured a genuine moment, because that is the purpose of photography. 

John Tagg
[Writer, theorist, and photohistorian, b. 1949, North Shields, England, lives in Ithica, New York.]

 I wanted to have a go at this theoretical conception of the Real-out-there and the conception of ideology that goes along with it, but also to suggest that surveilling the streets or getting on the road in the search of truth were activities implicated in a sorry history and saturated in relations of power. 
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