Quotes about photographer
page 3

Hélène Binet photo
Francis Picabia photo
Norman Mailer photo

“When you say journalist, it's like oh -- how many sources have you fact checked? When you say photographer -- it's, why are your photos a little bit out of focus? The answer is because I don't care. I like to call myself a storyteller so I don't have to worry about other people's definition of what correct work is.”

Brandon Stanton (1984) American photographer

CBS News, 2014; [Blogger makes intimate connections with strangers on streets of NYC, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/humans-of-new-york-blogger-talks-connecting-with-strangers/, CBS NEWS, January 2, 2014, January 6, 2014]

Richard Rodríguez photo
James McNeill Whistler photo
Boniface Mwangi photo
Arshile Gorky photo

“Art comes instinctively to us, but it is so uncertain. I have in front of me photographs of all Picasso’s best works. The mere I admire them the further I feel myself removed from all art, it seems so easy, so limited! We are part of the world creation, and we ourselves create nothing.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: 1930 - 1941, from 'Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof' (2009), p. 168: in a letter to his future wife Agnes Magruder (Mougouch), 7 Mai 1941

Adi Da Samraj photo
Alexander Rodchenko photo

“[my goal is] to photograph not a factory but the work itself from the most effective point of view.... in order to show the grandness of a machine, one should photograph not all of it but give a series of snapshots.”

Alexander Rodchenko (1891–1956) Russian artist and photographer

Quote, 1930: from Rodchenko lecture at the October group's meeting; as quoted by Margarita Tupitsyn in Chapter 'Fragmentation versus Totality: The Politics of (De)framing', in The great Utopia - The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 486
the issue was not to take 'photo pictures' of the entire object but to make 'photo stills' of characteristic parts of an object

Gerhard Richter photo

“Idiots can do what I do. When I first started to do this [projecting photos on the canvas and painting them after having them traced in details with a piece of charcoal] in the 60's, people laughed. I clearly showed that I painted from photographs. It seemed so juvenile. The provocation was purely formal - that I was making paintings like photographs. Nobody asked about what was in the pictures. Nobody asked who my Aunt Marianne was. That didn't seem to be the point.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Richter's aunt had been murdered by the Nazis in the name of euthanasia, a crime for which his father-in-law from his first marriage, a Nazi doctor named Heinrich Eufinger, had been partially responsible. Richter painted a portrait of his aunt in 1965, based on an old photo. It was called 'Tante Marianne' / 9Aunt Marianne).
after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Paul Klee photo

“..(Then come the lovers of art / and contemplate the bleeding work from outside. / Then come the photographers. / "New art," it says in the newspaper the following day. / The learned journals / give it a name that ends in "ism").”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1905), # 690, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1903 - 1910

Chris Cornell photo

“A certain scenario kept repeating itself. The people from the magazines would take two or three shots of the band. They’d start to pack up. And then they’d sort of take me off into a corner by myself. After about the thirtieth time that a photographer asked me to take my shirt off, I started to get the picture.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Interview with Details Magazine, December 1996 https://pitchfork.com/features/article/10081-chris-cornell-searching-for-solitude/,
Soundgarden Era

Derren Brown photo
Nicholas Sparks photo

“[Written on back of photograph of Ruth and Daniel]
"Ruth Levinson
Third grade teacher.
She believes in me and I can be anything I want when I grow up.
I can even change the world."”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Daniel McCallum, Chapter 28 Ira, p. 335
2009, The Longest Ride (2013)

Steven Pinker photo
Samuel Butler photo

“All things are like exposed photographic plates that have no visible image on them till they have been developed.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Development
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

Patrick Modiano photo

“Some have considered such photographs as evidence that Eakins, if not homosexual or bisexual, was at least homoerotic. But the artist would undoubtedly have done the same thing with his women students if such a thing had been possible.”

Gordon Hendricks (1917–1980) American historian

Gordon Hendricks: "The Life And Work Of Thomas Eakins", Grossman Publishers : New York 1974, ISBN 0-670-42795-0, p. 160
The photographs were studies for Eakins' painting Swimming, Hendricks was the first to connect Eakins with homosexuality.

Gerhard Richter photo

“When we describe a process, or make out an invoice, or photograph a tree, we create models; without them we would know nothing of reality and would be animals. Abstract pictures are fictive models, because they make visible a reality that we can neither see nor describe, but whose existence we can postulate.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

in text for catalogue of documenta 7, Kassel, 1982; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: on 'Abstract paintings' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/subjects-2/abstract-paintings-7
1980's

Paul Klee photo
River Phoenix photo
Susan Sontag photo
Jean Metzinger photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Ryū Murakami photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Susan Sontag photo
Kate Bush photo

“Just like a photograph,
I pick you up.
Just like a station on the radio,
I pick you up.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)

Alfred Horsley Hinton photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“Newspaper men, therefore, endlessly discuss the question of what is news. I judge that they will go on discussing it as long as there are newspapers. It has seemed to me that quite obviously the news-giving function of a newspaper cannot possibly require that it give a photographic presentation of everything that happens in the community. That is an obvious impossibility. It seems fair to say that the proper presentation of the news bears about the same relation to the whole field of happenings that a painting does to a photograph. The photograph might give the more accurate presentation of details, but in doing so it might sacrifice the opportunity the more clearly to delineate character. My college professor was wont to tell us a good many years ago that if a painting of a tree was only the exact representation of the original, so that it looked just like the tree, there would be no reason for making it; we might as well look at the tree itself. But the painting, if it is of the right sort, gives something that neither a photograph nor a view of the tree conveys. It emphasizes something of character, quality, individuality. We are not lost in looking at thorns and defects; we catch a vision of the grandeur and beauty of a king of the forest.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Bob Kane photo
Patrick Modiano photo
Varadaraja V. Raman photo

“Ultimately, we all become photographs.”

Varadaraja V. Raman (1932) American physicist

REFLECTIONS ON MY MORTALITY
Truth and Tension in Science and Religion

“I was thinking in the cab on the way here that when I did press for the original production it felt like this was what I’ve always dreamt of — to be talking about myself, and about a play that I’ve written, and to be photographed. It was what I wanted. Now it’s just part of the job.”

Patrick Marber (1964) English comedian, actor and screenwriter

Interview in Jewish Chronicle, 26 September 2007 http://thejc.com/home.aspx?AId55759&ATypeId1&searchtrue2&srchstrpatrick%20marber&srchtxt1&srchhead1&srchauthor1&srchsandp1&scsrch0

“I remember the first time I saw a photograph of Lenda Murray in a magazine. I was in complete awe, I cut out that picture and placed it on my refrigerator and, from that point on, my goal was to develop a physique like hers.”

Iris Kyle (1974) American bodybuilder

2008-04-08
Iris Kyle, Ms. Olympia
IFBBPRO.com
Internet
http://www.ifbbpro.com/features/iris-kyle-ms-olympia/
Sourced quotes, 2008

Joseph Heller photo

“He could never decide whether to furgle them or photograph them, for he had found it impossible to do both simultaneously.”

Source: Catch-22 (1961), pp.53-54. Dell 1962 edition. (First use of "furgle" in the United States.)

Dave Matthews photo

“There's often a lot of stupid ideas like "you all dress as fruits and pretend you're selling underpants" or "we'll put you on a bed of nails and drive a truck over the top and photograph you" for the cover.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Q&A: The Dave Matthews Band, interview by Richard Deitsch on CNN.com http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/richard_deitsch/07/21/media.circus/index.html

Neal Stephenson photo
Mickey Spillane photo
William H. Rehnquist photo

“Well, it's just a sense of personal satisfaction. Just like taking a good photograph or painting a picture or playing a good golf game or something, it's the thing in itself that justifies it.”

William H. Rehnquist (1924–2005) Chief Justice of the United States

On writing.
Booknotes http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/index_print.asp?ProgramID=1107 television interview (July 5, 1992)

Margaret Cho photo
Miley Cyrus photo

“That's what I want to do with my life. I would love to be a photographer, I want to come to London to study. I hear there are some great schools here so I would love to do that.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

TV Guide http://www.tvguide.com/News/Miley-Cyrus-Leibovitz-1000409.aspx (December 2, 2008)

Anthony Watts photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo

“The chief characteristic of the pin-hole photograph is that we get a general suppression of focus in all parts the picture is nowhere quite sharp.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Pin-hole as a substitute for the lens, p. 60

Fred Astaire photo
Fran Lebowitz photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Lindsay Lohan photo

“I often wished during those years that I could be a lyricist with a camera. […] I took great delight in [Edward Weston's] and many other photographers’ work. I envied them the freedom to photograph a landscape apparently without concern for the implications of its possession.”

David Goldblatt (1930–2018) South African photographer

In an interview with Okwui Enwezor, as quoted in "The Camera Is Not a Machine Gun" http://designobserver.com/article.php?id=10557, Fred Ritchin, 1998

Dylan Moran photo
Richard Griffiths photo

“I hate being the subject of photographs.”

Richard Griffiths (1947–2013) British actor

Observer interview (2005)

Prito Reza photo
Paul Theroux photo

“Photographers are failed painters.”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Picture Palace (1978)

Tom Petty photo

“If I am asked about the photographer’s role in our times, the power of the image and so on, I do not want to launch into explanations. I only know that people who know how to look are as rare as those who know how to listen.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, To Seize Life: Interview with Yvonne Baby (1961), p. 45

Carson Grant photo

“As actors, we need public relations to campaign for our next possible role, and any media promoting our work seems positive in nature; but whether in theater or on a film set, a bad unprofessional photograph at the wrong angle may not be as flattering to some actors, and may be considered a harmful exposure.”

Carson Grant (1950) American actor

Ernest Dempsey, "Camera Shy?", Digital Journal: Arts, Jan 10, 2011, p. 1
Pointing to the negative publicity factor with unsolicited photographs, article printed in Digital Journal 2011.

Howard S. Becker photo
Owain Owain photo
Andrew Vachss photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“Films are even stranger, for what we are seeing are not disguised people but photographs of disguised people, and yet we believe them while the film is being shown.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Comparing film and stage theatre in "The Divine Comedy" (1977)

Anastacia photo

“Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed.”

Thomas Pynchon (1937) American novelist

Phone call to CNN as reported in a CNN article (5 June 1997) http://cgi.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/

Derren Brown photo

“One of the techniques that I use to imitate psychic phenomena is photographic memory.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Alice Evans photo

“I love going out and it is a bit sad when the photographers stop asking you for your picture.”

Alice Evans (1971) British actress

"Meet La Belle Anglaise" By Anna Pursglove Evening Standard, 15 December 2000.

Gyles Brandreth photo
Alfred Stieglitz photo
Patrick Modiano photo

“A photograph can express silence.”

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

Suspended Sentences (1993)

“A photographer's best work is, alas, generally done for himself.”

John Szarkowski (1925–2007) American curator

Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art (1999)

Richard Long photo
Norman Mailer photo
Margaret Caroline Anderson photo
Tom Savini photo
Saul Leiter photo
Richard Feynman photo
Suzanne Ciani photo
Arthur Ponsonby photo

“In Vienna an enterprising firm supplied atrocity photographs with blanks for the headings so that they might be used for propaganda purposes by either side.”

Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) British Liberal and later Labour politician and pacifist

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction

John Barrowman photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo

“Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these Abu Ghraib photographs did.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

"Let's Go to the Olympics!" (18 May 2004); this was afterwards edited at ESPN to read "These horrifying digital snapshots of the American dream in action on foreign soil are worse than anything even I could have expected." Drudge Report (24 May 2004) http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2004/05/24/20040524_231202_flash3.htm
2000s

Susan Sontag photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo
Maurice Denis photo

“Art is no longer a visual sensation that we gather, like a photograph, as it were, of nature. No, it is a creation of our spirit, for which nature is only the occasion.”

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) French painter

Quote of Denis, 1909: from Bouillon 2006, pp. 17-18; as cited on Wikipedia: Maurice Denis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Denis - reference [9]
1890 - 1920

Neil Armstrong photo
Susan Sontag photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo
Rigoberto González photo
Edward German photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Anita Pallenberg photo