Women From The United States

"Is there even any point to doing the "if that guy who threatened to bomb the Capitol was Black or Muslim" convo at this point...?"

"I feel it is really different to be there at a show. It is such a great feeling and I hope that doesn’t die with the Internet as so many other things have. Go out, support those bands, have a beer, listen to some live music and don’t forget about it!"

"It’s not necessarily overtly racist, but it is shocking the way people have talked to me in my position as a director. People who work for me. Especially on a movie like this, where Jordan was the only other person of colour at the level of decision-making on the movie. And that’s unacceptable, frankly."

"I would have hated getting the question, ‘Isn’t it so timely right now, with all these deaths going on?’ That’s not why we made it. But I think it will happen again – a summer like last summer. I think that the story we’re telling was about that: the fact that it’s cyclical. It could come out next year, it could come out any time and still be relevant."

"I love horror and I felt like I had a really good idea about how to make something scary, but also I’m very measured, especially with a story like this, about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate."

"He’s a person, which is the whole point of this movie. He’s not just some like floating demon slayer, and it’s a really tricky balance…He’s someone who clearly has a lot of pain, and that’s something I find really interesting about him as a character."

"This is what happens when one group of Americans are taught generationally to believe they are the sole, true owners of a country their ancestors seized from the indigenous and reaped via the blood and toil of others they never viewed as fully human."

"To anger a conservative, lie to him. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth."

"The college must educate for a changing world ... about which we know only that it will be different from anything of which we have now had experience."

"Within its narrow classrooms the college must see to it that she [the student] is taught with breadth of view, and not only in so-called safe subjects, but in so-called dangerous subjects, in economics and history and psychology and religion; taught with sincerity which will call out sincerity in her; with imagination which will create for her a true and breathing picture of the world she is to meet; and with liberty of spirit which will make her all through her life demand ceaselessly for herself and others the same quickening air."

"I no longer run for self-recognition, but to reflect His perfect will that is already set in stone. I don't deserve anything. But by grace, through faith, Jesus has given me everything."

"Records come and go. The glory of God is eternal. Thank you Father."

"Trump is right. Pence should have sent back the certifications to the state legislatures, asking whether they were done according to the states' laws. That's what we advocated for. Pence was a coward at his moment in history to stand up for integrity."

"For people asking, this quotation has been attributed to Roosevelt, but there isn’t a specific record of him saying this in a speech. I posted it because the ifea itself is true, whether or not he said it! :)"

"Rather than whether or not there is a future for combat photography, I think one of the big differences now is the role of the civilian—the amateur photographer. Conflicts will always be newsworthy, someone will always need to be there to document. Now the technology is such that anyone can be there and take a quick picture, post it, and send it out to the world. In these pictures you don’t look at the artistry anymore—if there is such a thing—it is just information."

"I think at sea, it is always about some greater force. The forces of the weather, the sky, the wind, all these uncontrollable things, you really feel the greater force of nature. But at the same time, you are on this massive aircraft carrier that costs about one million dollars a day to run! You really see that tension between the natural world and the force of technology. I think for me, the sublime is always a tension of something that you can’t quite control. It creates these emotions in you that are rare, and that make you aware."

"For me, the landscape has always been the constant in my work. I work with scale as a way to give context to human endeavors, military endeavors, and the history of power. In the end, Vietnam has endured many battles and gone through so many changes. The Chinese invasion, the Japanese occupation, the colonialism of the French, the Indochina War, the Americans—the constancy was always the landscape. And people change, cultures change over time, but there is something about the land. Even as our world modernizes, there is a certain consistency, a certain authenticity."

"I do use the phrase “to take a picture,” but I think my work involves labor. It is a certain reworking of what you see and of the facts, in order to create this new fiction. It is certainly a making, a transformation."

"I think artists deal with something messy, and they keep it messy. Which is frustrating for people, especially when it comes to topics in which everyone has an opinion. I think we do move the conversation forward, but I also like to keep it messy. It is not a math problem. In a way, we should approach these topics in the way one would write an essay."

"The topic of the military raises questions in ways that other topics would not. There are photographers who have dealt with extreme poverty, or who have photographed horrific labor conditions, and they are not held accountable in the same way. They aren’t asked: what do you think of poverty? But the question of the military is so complicated that it riles up people’s opinions."

"I always take it one step at a time. I see each new project as a response to a certain dissatisfaction, to unanswered questions from the previous work. As we experience life, we change overtime and develop different concerns. Teaching, becoming a parent, losing a parent are some of the important markers that have influenced my work."

"I feel that the early part of my life was dictated by American foreign policy. This idea of human lives being caught in a much larger web of uncontrollable events was impressed upon me so the notion of scale have always been important to me. My interest in human endeavor or culture within the larger context, within the landscape has been a continuing foundation for my work."

"Art is always made against the backdrop of politics. Artists think historically. They think about the history of art, the history of their medium, they think about their personal history. Politicians should do more of that. At the current moment it seems that the aesthetics and artistry within how each political party or ideology is presented is vigorously critiqued."

"Most art photographers understand and often benefit from or engage with the fact that their medium plays a role in journalism, as evidence, propaganda…this is something we know. But the ambitions of the grey areas of subjectivity and experimentations one finds in photography is what I relate too. Color brings my work dangerously close to photojournalism. I rely on the tension between the objective and subjective within a picture to complicate a photograph. I also depend on a carefully crafted sequence of images in a sort of “essay” form to explore a complicated subject."

"I think anyone can make one, two great photographs. It is the endeavor, the sustained effort and exploration of an idea or a subject that is more significant."

"At this time of crisis, I find great comfort in returning to nature, the wilderness, the richness and vast scale of the land. It has shaped the American identity; circling back to the landscape gives me hope for the future."

"The one constant in my life is the landscape, in a broad sense of the word. I love the openness of the land and worry about how we’ve built our lives upon it, how little we maintain it, and how we assault it. It’s one reason for me to want to photograph it."

"I have always been terrified by the idea that my photographs would be “just” beautiful. Beauty is often seen as lacking in substance. Over time, I have become confident in my ability to apprehend situations that are defined by a kind of complicated beauty, when you are pulled in by the beauty but also pushed back by something problematic."

"While my return to Vietnam was intensely emotional, connecting to the landscape allowed me to disengage somewhat and gain perspective. I wanted to show Vietnam in a way I had not seen it shown before—not devastated, not victimized, not romanticized. I felt I could do that best through my exploration of the landscape."

"Biography can be a red herring in visual art. For writers it’s a genre and a process. They organize life stories, and I imagine that the craft of biography or autobiography is largely about organizing facts in a compelling way. For me, biography is interchangeable with curiosity. My story has been valuable to my work only because it provided me with intense curiosity about certain situations, places, and sensations."

"I certainly want to give my viewer the ability to “step into” an image and have a physical and mental experience, so it is necessary that the print be large enough; for me, that’s fifty to sixty inches wide, which is rather modest."

"I am acutely aware of the complex role Vietnam plays, as both history and myth, in the country I have adopted as my own and in the culture I have raised my children. I can’t say I embrace every American characterisation of Vietnam. But I see the Hollywood clichés, the lasting psychic scars and even the cheap fetishes as expressions of something very real and very human. Vietnam remains an unavoidable and unresolved subject. As history, place and subject, it is still unfolding."

"One thing great journalists and artists have in common is a desire to be surprised, to find yourself with way more than you bargained for when you began an inquiry with little more than a sense of intuition."

"Landscape, at its best, is not a narrow category. It is a source of surprise. It allows for the sudden assertion of a place, like an unexpected time signature within a melody."

"We never thought we could or would return to Vietnam. It was almost 20 years before the possibility arose. Memories are ever shifting when you live in exile."

"Why should we rest our highest office in America, on a man who fundamentally goes back and forth and really cannot be trusted to be consistent or accurate in anything."

"I could spend a full-time job just responding to the ridiculously illogical, inconsistent, and blatantly stupid arguments supporting Trump. But here's the thing: his supporters DON'T CARE about facts or logic. They aren't seeking truth. Trump probably could shoot someone in the middle of NYC and not lose support. And this is the cumulative reason why this nation is in such terrible shape: We don't have truth seekers; we have narcissists."

"War photographers were always placed on a pedestal. They put their lives at risk. Of course it is still very dangerous, but it also seems that now, there could just as easily be a civilian taking the picture. Maybe it is less a question of whether war photography will continue, and more a question of whether this idea of the heroic, self-sacrificing combat photographer will live on."

"It’s just skating, and I’ll survive, but at the same time, it’s hard because I’ve worked so long for this moment. It’s not the way I wanted it to go, but at the same time I’m telling everybody, you can fall and still get up and keep going."

"Every time I put myself on the ice I get nervous. And getting reps is really important to me when I feel under pressure. So even in exhibition I might not be as nervous as when I compete, but having the confidence that I can land it under the spotlights, and when I can see anything, is really important to me. So I just try to do it as much as I can."

"But I think a failure like that is always a learning experience. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about myself, and how to apply myself going into my next competition. It’s hard to skate like that, but I can only get better from here."

"If you really put your mind to it, anything is possible."

"A long time ago, a sports reporter wrote that I wasn’t strong in the free-skate, that I was more of a short program skater. And that bothered me because I work so hard every day just for a person to judge me on a couple of bad skates and deem me a bad free skater. That's absurd!"

"My parents are super excited that they've produced an Olympian. I don’t think they ever would have imagined this would happen in a million years, so I hope I represent not only Team USA, but the Japanese-American culture and my family as well."

"There's... a stigma that says Asian Americans are more the nerdy type, so for me to be a part of this successful sports team... means a lot."

"I had my dream Olympic skate [in the team event] and to me, I’ve been dreaming of that moment for such a long time, it made me feel like a superhero and superheroes save the day. And I wish I had said that we were all superheroes during the team event."

"There have been moments where I laughed at my own family's culture, though it's hard to separate out whether something funny is cultural, or just my grandma specifically."

"We all have different aspects of ourselves, and who we are to different people in our lives, at different stages of our lives."

"Americans always talk about family love being unconditional, and I realized that I didn't feel that way."

"Sometimes America is so great because it brings all of us together, but sometimes it can be so limiting because it puts labels on things."