Henry Peach Robinson
[Photographer, b. 1830, Ludlow, Shropshire, England, d. 1901, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.]
... any “dodge,” or trick, or conjuration of any kind is open to the photographer’s use so that it belongs to his art and is not false to nature. If the dodges, tricks, etc., lead the photographer astray, so much the worse for him; if they do not assist him to represent nature, he is not fit to use them. It is not the fault of the dodges, it is the fault of the bungler.
Donald McCullin
[Photographer, b. 1935, Finsbury Park, London, lives in Somerset, England.]
I like photographing the English landscape in the winter, because it’s naked and it’s cold and it’s lonely, and I feel lonely doing it—and yes, I feel as happy as anything. There’s no politics, there’s no one saying: “get off my land!” No one’s pointing a gun at me. It’s almost as if I’m drinking from the flower, as if I’m drinking the pure nectar of freedom.
Paul Valéry
[Writer and poet, b. 1871, Sète, France, d. 1945, Paris.]
All in all, can one think of a subject more deserving of the philosopher’s meditation than the enormous increase in the number of stars as well as in the number of cosmic radiations and energies whose record we owe to photography?
(1939)
Joe Deal
[Photographer, b. 1947, Topeka, Kansas, d. 2010, Providence, Rhode Island.]
My work is about the transformation of the landscape. My interest is in the boundaries—the lines of tension—between the environment and the construction of culture.
Charles Nègre
[Photographer, b. 1820, Grasse, France, d. 1880, Cannes, France.]
If art is the poetic interpretation of nature, photography is the exact translation; it is exactitude in art or the complement of art.
(1854)
Frederick Sommer
[Photographer, b. 1905, Angri, Italy, d. 1999, Prescott, Arizona.]
If I could find them [assemblages] in nature I would photograph them. I make them because through photography I have a knowledge of things that can’t be found.
Eliot Porter
[Photographer, b. 1901, Winnetka, Illinois, d. 1990, Santa Fe, New Mexico.]
My emotions, instincts, and interests are all with nature.
Daniel Boorstin
[Historian and scholar, b. 1914, Atlanta, Georgia, d. 2004, Washington, D.C.]
The most refined skills of color printing, the intricate techniques of wide-angle photography, provide us pictures of trivia bigger and more real than life. We forget that we see trivia and notice only that the reproduction is so good. Man fulfils his dream and by photographic magic produces a precise image of the Grand Canyon. The result is not that he adores nature or beauty the more. Instead he adores his camera—and himself.
