I think everybody starts out by seeing a few works of art and wanting to do something like them. You want to understand what you see, what is there, and you try to make a picture out of it. Later you realize that you can't represent reality at all - that what you make represents nothing but itself, and therefore is itself reality.
Gerhard RichterI remember that I felt I had to avoid all these sensational photos, the hanged woman, the man who shot himself, and so forth. I collected a great deal of material, including a number of banal, irrelevant photos, and then in the course of my work I came back to the very pictures I had actually wanted to avoid, which summed up the various stories.
Gerhard RichterFamily photos, pictures of groups, those are truely wonderful. And they are just as good as the old masters, just as rich and just as beautifully composed (what does that mean anyway).
Gerhard RichterI believe that he knew more what he was doing. I might be absolutely wrong about this, but that was my impression.
Gerhard RichterThey are specific places I have discovered here and there when I am on the road to take photos. I go especially to take photos.
Gerhard RichterI see the bomber pictures as an anti-war statement... which they aren't - at all. Pictures like that don't do anything to combat war. They only show one tiny aspect of the subject of war - maybe only my own childish feelings of fear and fascination with war and with weapons of that kind.
Gerhard Richter