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“To me documentary photography means making a picture so that the viewer doesn’t think about the man who made the picture. At its esthetic core is very old tradition in art: naturalism. And its purpose is to document all facets of social relationships.”
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“As the language or vocabulary of photography has been extended, the emphasis of meaning has shifted, shifted from what the world looks like to what we feel about the world and what we want the world to mean.”
Source : Aaron Siskind, Henry Holmes Smith, Thomas B. Hess (1965). “Aaron Siskind, photographer”
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“Producing a photographic document involves preparation in excess. There is first the examination of the idea of the project. Then the visits to the scene, the casual conversations, and more formal interviews - talking, and listening, and looking, looking. ... And finally, the pictures themselves, each one planned, talked, taken and examined in terms of the whole.”
Source : Aaron Siskind, Maricia Battle, Ann Banks, Federal Writers' Project, National Museum of American Art (U.S.) (1990). “Harlem photographs, 1932-1940”, Smithsonian Inst Pr
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“I was given a small camera as a wedding gift from a very dear friend. My first pictures were taken on my honeymoon. As soon as I became familiar with the camera, I was intrigued with the possibilities of expression it offered. It was like a discovery for me.”
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“When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order (unlike the world of events and actions whose permanent condition is change and disorder).”
Source : Aaron Siskind, Henry Holmes Smith, Thomas B. Hess (1965). “Aaron Siskind, photographer”
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“Teaching is an instinctual art, mindful of potential, craving of realizations, a pausing, seamless process.”
Source : A. Bartlett Giamatti (1981). “The University and the Public Interest”, Atheneum Books
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“Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building.”
Source : A. Bartlett Giamatti (1981). “The University and the Public Interest”, Atheneum Books
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“Better to be too early and have to try again, than be too late and have to catch up.”
Source : Twitter post from Feb 24, 2013 
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“Good satire goes beyond the specific point it’s trying to make and teaches you how to think critically. Even after your favorite cartoonist retires or [Stephen] Colbert wraps it up, you’re not left believing everything they’re telling you.”
Source : "The Interview: 'Boondocks' Creator Aaron McGruder". Interview with Michael Cavna, voices.washingtonpost.com. July 22, 2008.
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“Right now I'm doing four shows at a time, trying to read four outlines every week, four scripts every week, and watching four rough cuts; it's a lot of good work. It's fun to do it, but it does wear you out.”
