Hiroshi Hamaya
[Photographer, b. 1915, Tokyo, Japan, d. 1999, Kanagawa, Japan.]
I like the idea that my work isn’t intended only for the Earth, but for the entire Universe.
Annette Messager
[Artist, b. 1943, Berck-sur-Mer, France, lives in Paris.]
I never take a picture of a face because a face is somebody, an arm is not recognizable as somebody. When you take a photograph of someone’s face, it identifies it as somebody, but if you take just a fragment, it’s everybody. It’s not one person.
Richard Avedon
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 2004, San Antonio, Texas.]
Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is, how would you say, well, the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own.
Wim Wenders
[Artist and filmmaker, b. 1945, Düsseldorf, lives in Berlin.]
If anything, I see myself as a “witness.” I’d also be pleased, if you’d call me an “interpreter.” I try to hear and see the message of a place and pass it on, into that other language, the universal one of images.
Weegee (Usher Fellig)
[Photographer, b. 1899, Zlothew near Lemberg, Austrian Galicia (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), d. 1968, New York.]
When you find yourself beginning to feel a bond between yourself and the people you photograph, when you laugh and cry with their laughter and tears, you will know you are on the right track.
Paul Strand
[Photographer, b. 1890, New York, d. 1976, Oregeval, France.]
The artist is one who makes a concentrated statement about the world in which he lives and that statement tends to become impersonal—it tends to become universal and enduring because it comes out of something very particular.
Diane Arbus
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 1971, New York.]
I remember a long time ago when I first began to photograph I thought, there are an awful lot of people in the world and it’s going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them, so if I photograph some kind of generalized human being, everybody’ll recognize it. It’ll be like what they used to call the common man or something. It was my teacher, Lisette Model, who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you are, the more general it’ll be.
Minor White
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1908, Minneapolis, Minnesota, d. 1976, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
One should photograph objects, not only for what they are but for what else they are.
