Gerhard Richter
[Artist, b. 1932, Dresden, lives in Düsseldorf.]
I do not mistrust reality, of which I know next to nothing, but I am suspicious regarding the image of reality which our senses convey to us, and which is incomplete and limited. Our eyes have developed such as to survive. It is merely coincidence that we can see stars with them, as well.
Aaron Siskind
[Photographer, b. 1903, New York, d. 1991, Providence, Rhode Island.]
It is no longer a matter of expressing reality, but of expressing what one feels about reality.
Garry Winogrand
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, d. 1984, Tijuana, Mexico.]
I don’t have messages in my pictures... For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film… if, later the reality means something to someone else, so much the better.
Jean Cocteau
[Writer, poet, artist, and filmmaker, b. 1889, Maisons-Lafitte, France, d. 1963, Milly-la-Foret, France.]
The runner stopped dead, lost his balance, froze in one of those violent attitudes in which the photographers petrify living reality.
Thomas Ruff
[Photographer, b. 1958, Zell, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf, Germany.]
Photographs are still always depictions, it's just that for my generation the model for the photograph is probably not reality any more, but images we have of that reality.
Philip-Lorca diCorcia
[Artist, b. 1953, Hartford, Connecticut, lives in New York.]
Reality has become a parallel universe with photographers returning with different versions of what it truly looks like.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
The vast maw of modernity has chewed up reality and spat the whole mess out as images.
Justine Kurland
[Photographer, b. 1969, Warsaw, New York, lives mostly on the road.]
It seemed clear to me early on that one of the things a photograph could do was make a reality, and I wanted to do that. I always think of looking inside an Easter egg and seeing a perfect world.
