Photographers From The United States

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Keep diving and get really good at it. Too many folks try many other activities and don’t get good at any of them."

"The perception is that new equipment can make a diver relatively safe. I know people with the fanciest equipment including their “wrist watch”, but they are not necessarily good divers. There is a great gap between diver ability and equipment."

"Come on. Let’s go! We’re all part of this (expletive) history 2021! (expletive) This is insanity. I am shook. What is this? What is this painting, you know? King (expletive) bro (expletive)! Is this not going to be the best film you’ve ever made in your life? This is surreal. This is real life, though. This seems like a movie. This is a revolution. You guys treasure this moment. This is history."

"When you’re in a massive crowd like that, you have to blend in. As far as them storming the Capitol, I knew that was going to happen I’m on chats that are underground that are sending out flyers that are just like, ‘Storm all Capitols on the 6th.’ It wasn’t anything that was secret. It was something that was out there ... and they did it. I have video of it, I am hesitant to post it. It’s something I have to take in. I hope that people get a grasp of that situation. Whoever shot her, maybe should be held accountable. I guess that’s up to the law to decide."

"We gotta ... rip Trump right out of that office right there We ain't about .. waiting until the next election. It's time for revolution."

"There was a crowd of about, I would say, more than 50,000 people just at the Capitol base trying to get in"

"He has admitted that he has no press credentials and the investigation has not revealed any connection between SULLIVAN and any journalistic organizations."

"An armed revolution is the only way to bring about change effectively. I can tell you that the dynamics completely shifted when shots can be fired back. In this photo, I was met by 50 armed police officers at the Utah State capital. #BlackLivesMatter #BLM #Fuck12 #Acab"

"Fuck The System - Time To Burn It All Down. #blm #antifa #burn #fuckthesystem #abolishcapitalism #abolishthepolice #acab #fucktrump"

"I had to find out the psychology [of the Emcee] and who he was off stage so that hopefully I could bring that biography into those numbers.."

"Stick with it, be who you are. It’s going to be tough…But it’s also going to be beautiful."

"I called this doctor who was taking care of Rock Hudson. He said: ‘Do you have to kiss the actor?’ I said: ‘Yeah, it’s important in the script.’ He said: ‘Then I wouldn’t do the play.’ [Grey wrestled with it and chose the play and the kiss] I said: ‘I need to tell this story. As an actor it’s my job.’"

"I am an open-minded skeptic. I never go in thinking these things are there, but neither do I discount them out of the gate. I think there’s a number of stories we’ve investigated where I’ve walked away and thought, “Maybe there’s something going on there.”"

"I'm a big believer in that part of the experience, you know? If you talk to anybody about travel, just personally, so much of what they'll tell you about any trip is the mechanics of the trip. How the flight was, what went wrong, what went right, how they got stranded at that train station. One of the things that always struck me as kind of strange about travel-themed TV is how glossy it all is, ya know, which really doesn't match our experiences. That's fine if you're doing an aspirational, you know, "world's greatest pools" kind of thing or something, but you know for us, the journey is the expedition, right?"

"I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse."

"For me the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture. And more complicated. I do have a feeling for the print but I don't have a holy feeling for it. I really think what it is, is what it's about. I mean it has to be of something. And what it's of is always more remarkable than what it is."

"They are the proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain. And the stillness of them is boggling. You can turn away but when you come back they'll still be there looking at you."

"It's always seemed to me that photography tends to deal with facts whereas film tends to deal with fiction. The best example I know is when you go to the movies and you see two people in bed, you're willing to put aside the fact that you perfectly well know that there was a director and a cameraman and assorted lighting people all in that same room and the two people in bed weren't really alone. But when you look at a photograph, you can never put that aside."

"Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that's what people observe. You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw."

"I do feel I have some slight corner on something about the quality of things. I mean it's very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them."

"Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize."

"My favorite thing is to go where I've never been."

""Our whole guise is like giving a sign to the world to think of us in a certain way, but there's a point between what you want people to know about you and what you can't help people knowing about you. And that has to do with what I've always called the gap between intention and effect."Goldman, Judith."

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know."

"I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself."

"Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot....There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats."

"She was really terrific...Diane was one of the first female role models I ever had that didn’t wash the floor six times a day. I liked her as a teacher."

"In s, cold winters force bats to migrate or . Most travel less than 300 s to find a suitable cave or abandoned mine, where they remain for up to six months or more, surviving solely on stored fat reserves. However, several species are long-distance migrators, traveling from as far north as Canada to the or Mexico for the winter. A few species can survive short-term exposures to subfreezing temperatures, enabling them to overwinter in cliff faces or in the outer walls of buildings."

"Bats are among the few true hibernators. The breathing of a hibernating bat is imperceptible. Its heartbeat drops from roughly 400 beats per minute when awake to about 25 in hibernation. The body temperature often falls to within a tenth of a degree of surrounding cave walls."

"My trap consisted of two six-by-five aluminum frames with hundreds of vertical fishing lines strung between them. It looked like a harp, but with adjustable legs to support it a few feet off the ground and a canvas bag hanging below to hold captured bats. This device, which I had recently invented, was capable of catching thousands of bats per night, enabling me to sample and release large numbers without harming them."

"Populations of some North American insectivorous bats are known to have declined markedly in many areas over the past 20 years or more ... The causes and rates or extent of decline rarely are well documented."

"It's very simple: We fear most what we understand the least."

"More than 1,100 kinds of bats amount to approximately a quarter of all species, and they are found everywhere except in the most extreme desert and polar regions. Some 47 species live in the United States and Canada, but the majority inhabit s where, in total number of species, they sometimes outnumber all other mammals combined. Bats come in an amazing variety of sizes and appearances. The world's smallest mammal, the of Thailand, weighs less than a , but some es of the Old World tropics have wingspans of up to 6 feet. The big-eyed, winsome expressions of flying foxes often surprise people who never have thought that a bat could be attractive."