“The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: ’There is the surface. Now—think—or rather feel, intuit—what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.’ Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.”
                           ~Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1977



“The Photograph does not call up the past…The effect it produces on me is not to restore what has been abolished (by time, by distance) but to attest that what I see has indeed existed.
Every photograph is a certificate of presence.”

“The photograph is literally the emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant.”

“What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.”

“Ultimately—or at the limit—in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes…to allow the detail to rise of its own accord into affective consciousness.”

“In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder…over a catastrophe which has already occurred.… Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.”
                           ~Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, 1980



“The snapshot (is) the form of photography that is most defined by love. People take them out of love, and they take them to remember—people, places, and times. They’re about creating a history by recording a history. And that’s exactly what my work is about…I think the snapshot is one of the highest forms of photography.”

“For me it is not a detachment to take a picture. It’s a way of touching somebody—it’s a caress. …I think that you can actually give people access to their own soul.”
                           ~Nan Goldin, I’ll be Your Mirror, 1996



“I might even show you my photograph album. You might even see a face in it which might remind you of your own, of what you once were. You might see faces of others, in shadow, or cheeks of others turning, or jaws, or backs of necks, or eyes, dark under hats, which might remind you of others, whom you once knew, whom you thought long dead, but from whom you will still receive a sidelong glance.”
                           ~Harold Pinter, No Man’s Land, 1975



“What counts isn’t being able to do a thing, it’s seeing what it is. Seeing is the decisive act, and ultimately it places the maker and the viewer on the same level.”
                           ~Gerhard Richter,
                            The Daily Practice of Painting, 1990