Bret Harte
[Writer, b. 1836, Albany, New York, d. 1902, London.]
Besides writing, I have been teaching myself to ‘develop’ my own photographic plates, and I haven’t a stick of clothing or an exposed finger that isn’t stained. I sit for hours in a dark-room feeling as if I were a very elderly Faust at some dreadful incantation, and come out of it, blinding at the light, like a Bastille prisoner. And yet I am not successful!
Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon)
[Photographer, b. 1820, Paris, d. 1910, Paris.]
Photography is a marvelous discovery, a science that has attracted the greatest intellects, and art that excites the most astute minds—and one that can be practiced by any imbecile.
David LaChapelle
[Photographer, b. 1968, Connecticut, lives in New York.]
If you want reality take the bus.
Helen Levitt
[Photographer, b. 1918, New York, d. 2009, New York.]
A lot of my early pictures are, I think, quite funny. And these days I tend to look for comedy more and more.
René Burri
[Photographer, b. 1933, Zurich, Switzerland, d. 2014, Zurich.]
One of these days I’m going to publish a book of all the pictures I did not take. It is going to be a huge hit.
Robert Mapplethorpe
[Photographer, b. 1946, Floral Park, Long Island, d. 1989, Boston, Massachusetts.]
There’s a sense of humor in what I’m doing that I hope people would hook up on.
Jerry Uelsmann
[Photographer, b. 1934, Detroit, Michigan, lives in Gainesville, Florida.]
An old Uelsmann negative gathers no moss.
Jacob Riis
[Photographer and reformer, b. 1849, Denmark, d. 1914, Barre, Massachusetts.]
The more I live, the more I think that humor is the saving sense.
