Visual Critique Quotes

Anyday, one can walk down the street in a big city and see a thousand people. Any photographer can photograph these people - but very few photographers can make their prints not only reproductions of the people taken, but a comment upon them - or more, a comment upon their lives - or more still, a comment upon the social order that creates these lives.

According to one critic, my works looked like scraped billboards. I went to look at the billboards and decided that more billboards should be scraped.

My black-and-white work is more of a celebration, and the color work became more of a critique of society.

Question the images. Take them by the hand and don't let the sweet distancing they offer you vanquish you; do away with the distance's comfort or the soft indifference you derive from concentrating on the quality of the framing, the use of light and shadows, the successful composition. Force these images to bring you to the Mexican Southeast, to history, to the struggle, to this taking sides, to choose a faction.

When I take a black-and-white portrait, it's not particularly meant to please you. It's meant to talk to you; it's meant to shame you. It's meant to scream out at you, and it has a message.

Your camera is the best critic there is. Critics never see as much as the camera does. It is more perceptive than the human eye.

I think photographers are too polite. There is not enough anger in photography; it's pretty much trivialized.

The painter who feels obligated to depict his subjects as uniformly beautiful or handsome and without flaws will fall short of making art.