Jock Sturges Quotes

There are photographs that I don’t take now, that I previously would have taken without any thought at all as to any misinterpretations.

Different members of different cultures will think that some things are beautiful.

Any artist that's involved in their work is inevitably going to have a focus in what they do.

I don't photograph any two people who are remotely the same.

When I started doing my work years ago, I had doubts as to whether the informed consent question was answerable.

That dichotomy between the public consumption of the work and my intent and practice in making it is an uneasy one for me, on occasion.

All my life I've taken photographs of people who are completely at peace being what they were in the situations I photographed them in.

The truth is that from birth on we are, to one extent or another, a fairly sensual species.

I'm the last person who has any desire to instruct anybody in shame. That's no errand for me.

That's my ambition: that you look at the pictures and realize what complex, fascinating, interesting people every single one of my subjects is.

I found myself serving a sentence of public denial from the very second the raid on my apartment happened.

If it gets to the Supreme Court, I'll have the directors of every museum in the country as expert testimony that my work is legitimate art.

Physical beauty is such a strange thing.

The world is shrinking as we see more and more of it in the media, and the more we see of the world, the smaller we are, the more aware we are of how insignificant any one of us is.

The kids really enjoy what they do. I check with them constantly to make sure that they're really happy to be there.

Some of the people that I photographed as sticks became much more voluptuous, much rounder, in some cases dramatically so, and I think they're even more beautiful.

I'm guilty of extraordinary naivete, I suppose. But it's a naivete that I really don't want to abandon, not even now.

We live in an age where anonymity is growing in magnitude like a bomb going off.

But empirically I've come to understand that my photographs really don't do any harm.

It's no small irony that the government inevitably and invariably ends up promoting precisely that which they would most like to repress.

There isn't a person alive who doesn't like being caressed.

I'll go to do a shoot, I'll spend five or six hours at the beach with people, and when people think I'm all out of film, then they really relax and I get my good pictures.

I became good at defending myself, but as far as I was concerned, that was a transient skill.

Every child is going to grow up. You can see it happen in the books: They get older and older and belong to themselves to a greater and greater extent.

In fact, I don’t believe I’m guilty of any crimes, but I’ve always been drawn to and fascinated by physical, sexual, and psychological change, and there’s an erotic aspect to that.

I am fascinated by the human body and all its evolutions.

Before, I'd photograph anything. I didn't think there was anything more or less obscene about any part of the body.

I just yesterday returned from a trip where I photographed a woman with two children whom I photographed first when she was the age of the older of the two children.

I'm an artist that's attracted to a specific way of seeing and a way of being.

They were without clothes before I got there, and they were without clothes when I left.

No two people take on the information of being admirable and being admired in the same way.

It's really, really hard to make it as a fine-art photographer exclusively.

I'd rather get back to making art than talk about it.

Virtually always I get my best pictures when everybody thinks the shoot's done.

I know the families that I photograph extremely well and have known them for a very long time.

I've had to relearn how I work with people so that if and when I do avoid different things I don't send any messages in doing so.

The transactions between me and the people that I photograph are very very collaborative.

I use an 8 x 10 view camera. All other cameras are just toys.

What I'm good at is making art.

As soon as you forbid something, you make it extraordinarily appealing. You also bring shame in as a phenomenon.