Anders Petersen
[Photographer, b. 1944, Solna, Sweden, lives in Stockholm.]

 There is not a big difference between life and taking pictures... You’re in the middle of life, you’re living, making love, eating, sleeping—and photography is part of it. And I don’t say this because I’m being romantic. I say this because that’s just the way it happens to be. 

Arthur Tress
[Photographer, b. 1940, Brooklyn, New York, lives in Cambria, California.]

 Photography is my method for defining the confusing world that rushes constantly toward me. It is my defensive attempt to reduce our daily chaos to a set of understandable images. 

Jacob Riis
[Photographer and reformer, b. 1849, Denmark, d. 1914, Barre, Massachusetts.]

 I do not want [photography] explained to me in terms of... formulas, learned, but so hopelessly unsatisfying. I do not want my butterfly stuck on a pin and put in a glass case. I want to see the sunlight on its wings as it flits from flower to flower and I don’t care a rap what its Latin name may be. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]

 As far as I am concerned, taking photographs is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s own originality. It is a way of life. 

Donald McCullin
[Photographer, b. 1935, Finsbury Park, London, lives in Somerset, England.]

 I felt I had seen so much horror that it was likely to destroy me…. Yet… I cannot do without the head-on collision with life I have when I am working. 

Mona Kuhn
[Photographer, b. 1969, São Paulo, Brazil, lives in Los Angeles.]

 [The most important factor in making a good picture is] to know who or what you are photographing. It is not about photography; it should be about life. 

Susan Meiselas
[Photographer, b. 1948, Baltimore, Maryland, lives in New York.]

 It’s a strange experience… the photograph is like an object frozen in time, and people’s lives go on. 

Paul Strand
[Photographer, b. 1890, New York, d. 1976, Oregeval, France.]

 I’ve always wanted to be aware of what’s going on around me, and I’ve wanted to use photography as an instrument of research into and reporting on the life of my own time. 
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