No individual photo explains anything. That's what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium. It is the photographer's job to get this medium to say what you need it to say. Because photography has a certain verisimilitude, it has gained a currency as truthful - but photographs have always been convincing lies.
Joel SternfeldThe digital print is becoming the look of our time, and it makes the C-print start to look like a tintype.
Joel SternfeldSome people consider utopia to be derived from nature. For some people, utopia is the city.
Joel SternfeldEven the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, with all due respect to him, are notoriously burned and dodged.
Joel SternfeldNo individual photo explains anything. That's what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium. It is the photographer's job to get this medium to say what you need it to say. Because photography has a certain verisimilitude, it has gained a currency as truthful - but photographs have always been convincing lies.
Joel SternfeldPhotography has always been capable of manipulation. Even more subtle and more invidious is the fact that any time you put a frame to the world, it's an interpretation. I could get my camera and point it at two people and not point it at the homeless third person to the right of the frame, or not include the murder that's going on to the left of the frame. You take 35 degrees out of 360 degrees and call it a photo. There's an infinite number of ways you can do this: photographs have always been authored.
Joel Sternfeld