Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Fetish is the exploration of sex as art, and the refinement of one’s personal desires. Anything can be fetishised...There’ll be new fetishes forever. I feel that the 21st century is all about fetish.
I don't see many artists who are not trying to bring their work to the public - -to the contrary I see artists nearly desperate to get attention for their art and, failing that, often for themselves.
It's unarguable to say that every one of us has been moved by the beauty of what I have called snapshots, but for photographers they are charms and proverbs, and like lightening or wild strawberries.
In this day and age of things moving so, so fast, we still long for things to stop, and we as a society love the still image. Every time there is some terrible or great moment, we remember the stills.
Some photographers take reality... and impose the domination of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation.
The nazis slaughtered millions because they dehumanized their victims... but when it comes to dehumanizing victims the most useful and most widely used tool throughout history is, of course, religion.
In fact, I'm a bit of a slob, but I've always said my excuse, I have a higher sense of order, I can see it where others can't. That's my excuse for slobbery, I must admit, but I think it's a good one.
It seems to me that the whole purpose of the workshops is really twofold. One - to help people make better pictures, and two - to unleash their creativity to the fullest amount that they possibly can.
You only do exercises in art school. That's not the real thing. A little bit tells you so much. You have to find your own self. And you don't know what you are! But that's what you have to search for.
Why do photographers start giving numbers to their prints? It’s absurd. What do you do when the 20th print has been done? Do you swallow the negative? Do you shoot yourself? It’s the gimmick of money.
The problem is almost everybody is just recording the world with home photographic toys, not doing metaphor or ideas. We have a photographic culture that's not conditioned to think in terms of symbol.
[Photography] underlines the photographer. That's the Barthesian this has been. Well, this has been for the photographer as well. The photographer is the hidden placeholder in the Barthesian equation.
Travel is the best investment you can make in yourself. It teaches you that there are many ways to live a good, fulfilled life. It broadens your world view, yet makes you appreciate home all the more.
I loved the High Line when it was just mine, when I was the only person up there, and I had a private park in New York City. I had to make an appointment to see it... I'd walk around. I was all alone.
Oddly, I'd been to most of the locations where I started photographing slavery many times before. I even considered some of them homes-away-from-home. But there can be dark corners in familiar places.
Photojournalism is neither photography or journalism. It has its function but it's not where I see myself: the press is for me just a means for photographing, for material – not for telling the truth.
I would die if I had to be confined. I don't want to feel that I'm missing out on experiencing as much as I can. For me, experiencing is knowing people all over the world and being able to photograph.
People are self-conscious at first. But it gets better as we kind of dance with each other... it's like a date, in a way. We get more comfortable together. The best pictures are usually the last ones.
Because art as a pursuit, as a concept, as an ideal, constantly elevates one above the pragmatic, one is inclined to discuss art in heightened terminologies. For me, it is just what I do all day long.
I suppose the primary intention of a documentary photographer is to document facts. My work often does this but it is not the primary intention. My intention is to make the best pictorial image I can.
This might seem off the track, but an interesting thing to me that others could talk about better than I, but one of the growth areas in photographic education has been the so-called slow photography.
[Through the making of Dream of Life] I learned about being patient, perseverance, having a dream, a goal. I learned that I can accomplish something despite not knowing anything about it when I begin.
There's an awful lot of work being done that no one ever sees, or that is only seen in the gallery world. I feel that the public are losing touch with the great stuff that's being done in photography.
Only the few times I've been to so-called treatment centers, which were a complete waste of money and useless. I didn't know what I was doing at the time, because I was always drunk when I checked in.
In America, kids would go to college and get out and buy a second-hand car and go across the country and discover America. I never did that; I went from New York to Paris, and New York was my America.
For me, an aerial picture is no different than a close-up portrait. It's a question of framing and angle. Helicopters are great for that. But I've also used planes. Of course, I always have a harness.
People can talk about the death of social life or whatever; it's not necessarily how I see it. It's more musical in the sense, where it's a feeling about the place I live, slash, who I am in the place.
I usually have an immediate recognition of the potential image, and I have found that too much concern about matters such as conventional composition may take the edge off the first inclusive reaction.
The photo-journalist and the photo-poet are both important. The problem is to separate the major objectives of the various groups and not to attribute qualities and intentions where they do not belong.
I attribute my entire football career, as far as getting me started, getting me interested, keeping me that way was my father. He went to every game even though he was crippled and wasn't real healthy.
White is the color of decomposition. White is also no color. White is nothing. In photography, the paper is white, next comes the light, which is also white, then the shadow is created, the apparition.
I want to interpret the natural world and our links to it. It's driven by the belief of many world-class scientists that we're in the midst of an extinction crisis... This time it's us that's doing it.
People gave us everything for free. We were allowed only so much film per picture, but there was no limit to the creativity. I like to say that they let us loose like wild dogs in the streets of Paris.
I read a recent statistic that eighty-seven percent of women are dissatisfied with themselves, and over forty-seven percent of men. My work is visu-medicine to heal people and see beauty within people.
... photojournalism has its tremendous rewards and it's wonderful work. In what other work can you wander aimlessly with a camera around your neck, armed only with your personal interest and your eyes?
And my real enemy is not to hold the specimen sterile, but it's the lighting. The light is our real enemy. So we have to work with very very poor lighting. But we can increase the light with computers.
In every successful still photographic project that I have completed, there has always been a turning point in the story where I felt that perhaps I was working on something that could be very special.
The complete disregard for the camera's presence indicates its complete saturation in their lives. The subject neither notices nor seems to care that someone has been invited into their private moment.
I have a taste for the macabre. I really am not drawn to imagery that is pretty, things that are just pretty. I’m drawn to things that challenge you, that make you nervous, that make you uncomfortable.
Happiness is your True Nature. Within you is Unimaginable Beauty. Your True Self is Bright and Shining this Moment. Through the clear Realization of the Truth, your Real Self will come shining through.
Sometimes I think the only memories I have are those that I’ve created around photographs of me as a child. Maybe I’m creating my own life. I distrust any memories I do have. They may be fictions, too.
I wish I could be a better writer, but writing is so difficult. I get seduced by visual aesthetics. Because I just like making beautiful pictures, sometimes I wander away from making a clear statement.
When I read, I take notes and underline things. So reading is a vigorous process for me, but I read in bed. My poor husband is trying to go to sleep, and I'm reaching over him to get the Post-it notes.
Very often I say to myself: I would like to make a photo where nothing happens. But in order to eliminate, there has to be something to begin with. For nothing to happen, something has to happen first.
How easy it is to forgive and loose the most violent offender, when in tears, they repent. How difficult it is forgiving our own self, for the eyes of our reflection will always expose our untold sins.
I thought it would be a good idea to look at New York with this half-European, half-native eye and really do something to get back at this city that I thought really gave me a hard time when I grew up.
It is personal issues that makes me do what I do, for I have been raped more than 50 times by just listening to what women who have confessed and confirmed their love for other women have been through.
I was scared when I went to Conde Nast. I had heard horror stories about how they used you up and then spit you out and went on. But there was this great history of photography that had been done there.
The technique of 35mm photography appears simple. One is beguiled by the quick viewing and operation, and by the very questionable inclination to make many pictures with the hope that some will be good.
Photography and photographers have an inevitable development. They progress more or less by steps. Every five or ten years some new point of view is developed and young people are inclined to follow it.