Aaron Siskind
[Photographer, b. 1903, New York, d. 1991, Providence, Rhode Island.]
For some reason or other there was in me the desire to see the world clean and fresh and alive, as primitive things are clean and fresh and alive. The so-called documentary picture left me wanting something.
Karl Blossfeldt
[Photographer, b. 1865, Schielo, Germany, d. 1932, Berlin.]
If I give someone a horsetail he will have no difficulty making a photographic enlargement of it—anyone can do that. But to observe it, to notice and discover its forms, is something that only a few are capable of.
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre
[Artist and one of the originators of photography, b. 1787, Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d'Oise, France, d. 1851, Bry-sur-Marne, France.]
[The daguerreotype] consists in the spontaneous reproduction of the images of nature received in the camera obscura, not with their colors, but with very fine gradation of tones.
(1838)
Edward Weston
[Photographer, b. 1886, Highland Park, Illinois, d. 1958, Wildcat Hill, California.]
Only with effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium: so the photographer is much more likely to approach nature in a spirit of inquiry, of communion, instead of with the saucy swagger of self-dubbed “artists.”
Eliot Porter
[Photographer, b. 1901, Winnetka, Illinois, d. 1990, Santa Fe, New Mexico.]
Nature should be viewed without distinction. All her processes and evolutions are beautiful or ugly to the unbiased undiscriminating observer. She makes no choice herself—everything that happens has equal significance.
August Sander
[Photographer, b. 1876, Herdorf, Germany, d. 1964, Cologne.]
Nothing seemed to me more appropriate than to project an image of our time with absolute fidelity to nature by means of photography.
William Henry Fox Talbot
[Mathematician and pioneer of photography, b. 1800, Melbury, Dorset, England, d. 1877, Lacock Abbey, England.]
Authors and Publishers will find the Photographic process in many cases far preferable to engraving for illustrating their works, especially when faithful representations of Nature are sought.
(1846)
Jonathan Green
[Writer, photographer, and curator, b. 1939, lives in Riverside, California.]
The desire to spiritualize the American earth is deeply rooted in a Puritan and romantic attempt to find in the new American landscape the religious sources that had been left behind in the old world. The burden this has placed on Americans who have photographed the natural world has been overwhelming.
