LensWork #83 (The Bill Jay's Best of EndNotes issue)

So I ask you, again, what evidence exists that arts students become “better” human beings? Any one?

” Unfortunately, it may be that war photography of any real power is already dead. In the past few wars in which the USA was involved, photographers were not allowed access to the conflict, but became the mere transmitters of military propaganda. In a way, this is proof of photography’s potency; it must be powerful if the military takes such great

The best paragraph in the whole issue was a story told by Ben Shahn, one of the most fascinating photographers to have worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s. In search of a loan, a farmer was coldly rejected by a banker. In the face of the farmer’s pleas, the banker made him a “sporting offer,” recalled

Why, then, do I feel slightly uneasy at the disparity between the opulence of the book and the degradation of its subjects? Some questions have no easy answers, or, as Susan Sontag wrote: “The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.”

the words of Groucho Marx: “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.”

He was a gifted photographer, and I did not say thank you. That’s life, but it need not be.

In the ancient Greek world there was no need for contemplation. It was agreed. The greatest sin of all was hubris: an exaggerated pride which leads one to claim more than is one’s due.

Pictorialism, with a small “p” always has been an essential element in the best photographs throughout the medium’s history. And it is still true. It acknowledges that photography is a PICTURE-making process. Pictures are very good at emphasizing feeling; they are very bad at conveying ideas. Ideas need words. If the words or ideas already exist, t

As du Camp wrote, “The risk [of being honest] was great; but we could not let him continue this way, since at stake was a literary future in which we had absolute faith.”