Mary Beth Edelson
[Artist and feminist activist, b. 1935, East Chicago, Indiana, lives in New York.]
The camera is in fact usually the only witness to my private rituals—the best of them have been when I am alone.
Oscar Rejlander
[Photographer, b. 1817, Sweden, d. 1875, London.]
But as there is no mind in the photographic picture, so according to some it cannot contain any new idea, pose, light, or expression capable of representing impressions produced on the human mind, and “not being the work of man” it must be, indirectly, the work of the devil...
(1863)
Robert Mapplethorpe
[Photographer, b. 1946, Floral Park, Long Island, d. 1989, Boston, Massachusetts.]
I was a Catholic boy, I went to church every Sunday. A church has a certain magic and mystery for a child. It still shows in how I arrange things. It’s always little altars.
John Szarkowski
[Curator, critic, historian, and photographer, b. 1925, Ashland, Wisconsin, d. 2007, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.]
A long generation ago photographers still worked under great black focusing cloths, which hid not only their faces but (it seemed) their magic secrets. Old photographers smelled of hypo, and had fingernails black to the cuticle, and were surrounded by an aura of esoteric alchemy.
Paul Caponigro
[Photographer, b. 1932, Boston, Massachusetts, lives in Cushing, Maine.]
In my years of photography I have learned that many things can be sensed, seen, shaped, or resolved in a realm of quiet, well in advance of, or between, the actual clicking of shutters and the sloshing of films and papers in chemical solutions. I work to attain a “state of heart,” a gentle space offering inspirational substance that could purify one’s vision. Photography, like music, must be born in the unmanifest world of the spirit.
Ruth Bernhard
[Photographer, b. 1905, Berlin, d. 2006, San Francisco.]
For me, the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny. Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe.
Secondo Pia
[Lawyer and amateur photographer, b. 1855, Asti, Italy, d. 1941, Milan.]
Shut up in my darkroom all intent on my work, I experienced a very strong emotion when, during the development, I saw for the first time the Holy Face appear on the plate, with such clarity that I was dumbfounded by it.
(On his 1898 photograph which highlighted the alleged face in what is known as “the Shroud of Turin.”)
Chester Higgins
[Photographer, b. 1946, Lexington, Kentucky, lives in Brooklyn, New York.]
I believe the spirit of things exists in everything, including plant life and animal life. So I started challenging myself to see if I could translate this spirit into an image.
