Patti Smith
[Musician, artist, and writer, b. 1946, Chicago, Illinois, lives in Detroit and New York.]

 He found it was as easy to hurl beauty as anything else. (On Robert Mapplethorpe) 

Ernst Haas
[Photographer, b. 1921, Vienna, Austria, d. 1986, New York City.]

 A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it? 

Sally Mann
[Photographer, b. 1951, Lexington, Virginia, lives in Lexington.]

 I have found tangible evidence that within this life’s sweet tedium reside certain truths: that nothing attains maximum beauty until touched with decay, that the vulgar and miraculous can be one. 

Chris Burden
[Artist, b. 1946, Boston, Massachusetts, d. 2015, Los Angeles.]

 It’s about trying to frame something. And draw attention to it and say, “Here’s the beauty in this. I’m going to put a frame around it, and I think this is beautiful.” That’s what artists do. It’s really a pointing activity. 

Wim Wenders
[Artist and filmmaker, b. 1945, Düsseldorf, lives in Berlin.]

 An image that is unseen can’t sell anything. It is pure, therefore true, beautiful, in one word: innocent. As long as no eye contaminates it, it is in perfect unison with the world. If it is not seen, the image and the object it represents belong together. 
 The beautiful image today means nothing. It’s worth shit. In fact, it’s almost as if it has the opposite effect, because you’re just like everything else out there. 

David Maisel
[Photographer, b. 1961, New York, lives in San Francisco.]

 I can’t let myself ever make pictures that are beautiful unless there’s some price that’s been paid. 

Richard Misrach
[Photographer, b. 1949, Los Angeles, lives in San Francisco.]

 Probably the strongest criticism leveled at my work is that I’m making “poetry of the holocaust.” But I’ve come to believe that beauty can be a very powerful conveyor of difficult ideas. It engages people when they might otherwise look away. 
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