A Quote by John Loengard

There are two kinds of photographs: mine and other people's. I never think of what I might do myself when I look at someone else's pictures... there is no subject in the world I have ever wanted to photograph. It's the picture, not the object, that is important to me.
Since I switched to an iPhone, I did start taking pictures of people I like. Until then, I strangely never took pictures. I think the iPhone became this space that was different enough from a "photograph," so I find myself taking pictures of daily things. If someone I dated asked me to take their picture, I would most likely find it disturbing. Perhaps nude pictures would be fun. But that would have to be on an iPhone.
I think you reveal yourself by what you choose to photograph, but I prefer photographs that tell more about the subject. There's nothing much interesting to tell about me; what's interesting is the person I'm photographing, and that's what I try to show. [...] I think each photographer has a point of view and a way of looking at the world... that has to do with your subject matter and how you choose to present it. What's interesting is letting people tell you about themselves in the picture.
I know what I like to use myself. I use Leicas, but when I look at the photograph, I don't ask the photograph questions. Mine or anybody else's. The only time I've ever dealt with that kind of thing is when I'm teaching.
I think I’ve said this before many times—that photography allows you to learn to look and see. You begin to see things you had never paid any attention to. And as you photograph, one of the benefits is that the world becomes a much richer, juicier, visual place. Sometimes it is almost unbearable — it is too interesting. And it isn’t always just the photos you take that matters. It is looking at the world and seeing things that you never photograph that could be photographs if you had the energy to keep taking pictures every second of your life.
We regard the photograph, the picture on our wall, as the object itself (the man, landscape, and so on) depicted there. This need not have been so. We could easily imagine people who did not have this relation to such pictures. Who, for example, would be repelled by photographs, because a face without color and even perhaps a face in reduced proportions struck them as inhuman.
What I want is the world to remember the problems and the people I photograph. What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures. Nothing more than this. I don't want people to look at them and appreciate the light and the palate of tones. I want them to look inside and see what the pictures represent, and the kind of people I photograph.
I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women... There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night... Who ever wants to know something about me... ought to look carefully at my pictures.
I am not much interested in discovering new territories to photograph. Instead, what I wish my pictures could do is lessen the distance one often feels when looking at landscape photographs... The longer I work, the more important it is to me to make photographs that tell my story as a participant, and not just an observer of the land.
In this world I probably know best. The person I like doesn't look at me but looks at someone else, smiles for someone else. I really know how you're feeling. And I can't truthfully be jealous either. I think if two people naturally like each other, it's almost like a miracle. Someday, will that miracle come true for me too?
My work shows the beauty in so many different kinds of people because I never photograph anyone who I don't think is beautiful. I never take an intentionally mean picture.
All of us tend to look at photographs as if we are simply gazing through a two-dimensional window onto some outside world. This is almost a perceptual necessity; in order to see what the photograph is of, we must first repress our consciousness of what the photograph is.
I really care about people, and I would need someone to also genuinely value other human beings and want to be connected with people in the world and to know about other cultures. That might not be a high standard for someone else, but for me, it's really important to try and stick to that.
Saudi Arabia is so conservative. At first there were photographs of women I took that I couldn't publish - of women without their abayas. So I started writing out little anecdotes about things I couldn't photograph and wove it in with a more obscure picture and called it "moments that got away". I realised these worked as well as the photographs by themselves. There are a lot of photographers who feel the story is all in the photographs but I really believe in weaving in complementary words with the pictures.
If my mother was taking pictures, I never wanted her to take the camera off me, ever. When I look at my videos from when I was even just two, I would be playing ballerina.
First of all, I appropriate photographs.In presenting the Richard Prince photograph I tried to be as neutral as I could be. I put down the fact of it. I wanted it to be the same thing he wanted it to be, an open ended invitation to think about authorship, and who owns a created work. So I pair it with my appropriated picture.
As far as the surface is concerned - oil on canvas, conventionally applied - my pictures have little to do with the original photograph. They are totally painting (whatever that may mean). On the other hand, they are so like the photograph that the thing that distinguished the photograph from all other pictures remains intact.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!