Edward Steichen
[Photographer and curator, b. 1879, Luxembourg, Germany, d. 1973, West Redding, Connecticut.]
Photography is a medium of formidable contradictions. It is both ridiculously easy and almost impossibly difficult. It is easy because its technical rudiments can readily be mastered by anyone with a few simple instructions. It is difficult because, while the artist working with any other medium begins with a blank surface and gradually brings his conception into being, the photographer is the only image-maker who begins with his picture completed. His emotions, his knowledge, and his native talent are brought into focus and fixed beyond recall the moment the shutter of his camera has closed.
David Hockney
[Artist, b. 1937, Bradford, England, lives in Bridlington, Yorkshire; London; and Los Angeles.]
Cubism was about the destruction of a fixed way of looking. A fixed position implies we are standing still, that even the eye is still. Yet we all know our eyes move constantly, and the only time they stop moving is when we’re dead—or when we’re staring. And if we’re staring, we’re not really looking. That is the problem with the single frame photograph: all you can actually do is stare at it. Your eyes cannot wander around in it, because of its inherent lack of time.
Daido Moriyama
[Photographer, b. 1938, Ikeda-cho, Osaka, Japan, lives in Tokyo.]
People steadily lose the landscapes they have accumulated. It’s not likely that anyone can faithfully recall how scenes appeared ten or twenty years ago... I think people continue to live in the present because we forget most every little thing. The remembrances that sneak up on a tired soul may sometimes stir us, but there is no tomorrow in that... Where in the world did the era beyond my memories and the people who lived in it disappear to? After time, which we can actually only see now in historical documents, there are memories we carry. After our time, what memories will be carried forth by the people who follow?
Wynn Bullock
[Photographer, b. 1902, Chicago, Illinois, d. 1975, Monterey, California.]
I now measure my growth as a photographer in terms of the degrees to which I am aware of, have developed my sense of, and have the skills to symbolize visually the four-dimensional structure of the universe.
Brett Weston
[Photographer, b. 1911, Los Angeles, d. 1993, Kona, Hawaii.]
The taint of age can be very beautiful. The wreckage of man-made objects is something more beautiful than the new. Rust and weathering adds a patina of... well, I call it “elegant shit” or “elegant gorp.”
Thomas Demand
[Photographer, b. 1964, Munich, Germany, lives in Los Angeles.]
The production of models is at the core of a complex process.... The surroundings I portray are for me something untouched, a utopic construction. No traces are visible on their surfaces, and time seems to have come to a stop. From this arises a paradoxical state of indeterminacy, which of course in one sense opposes the idea of momentariness (so important to the beginnings of photography) but also opposes the true nature of sculpture.
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.
Julio Cortázar
[Writer, b. 1914, Brussels, Belgium, d. 1984, Paris, France.]
... recover the keynote of distraction, the sight without a frame around it, light without the diaphragm aperture or 1/250 sec. Right now (what a word, now, what a dumb lie) I was able to sit quietly on the railing overlooking the river watching the red and black motorboats passing below without it occurring to me to think photographically of the scenes, nothing more than letting myself go in the letting go of objects, running immobile in the stream of time.
