Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
A lot of people in the early decades of photography tried to treat it as if it were simply some kind of copying machine, as an aid in reproducing or dispensing a certain kind of visual information, but not itself as an independent source of seeing or of material that would fundamentally change our visual sensibility, as, in fact, it has.
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.
Sherrie Levine
[Artist, b. 1947, Hazleton, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
Maybe I should see things as they really are and not as I want them to be.
Umberto Eco
[Writer, semiotician, and philosopher, b. 1932, Alessandria, Piedmont, Italy, d. 2016, Milan.]
If photography is to be likened to perception, this is not because the former is a “natural” process but because the latter is also coded.
Wim Wenders
[Artist and filmmaker, b. 1945, Düsseldorf, lives in Berlin.]
I think seeing happens partly through the eyes, but not entirely.
Minor White
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1908, Minneapolis, Minnesota, d. 1976, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
To see through, not merely with, the eye, to perceive with the inner eye, and by an act of choice to capture the essence of that perception. This is the very core of the creative process.
Ruth Bernhard
[Photographer, b. 1905, Berlin, d. 2006, San Francisco.]
If you are not willing to see more than is visible, you won’t see anything.
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
[Writer, b. 1903, Motihari, Bengal, India, d. 1950, London.]
To see what is in front of one’s nose requires a constant struggle.
