It is surprisingly difficult for most people to accept the photographic print as an original object, except when produced by an atypical minority of photographic processes which include dageurreotypes, photograms and colour Polaroids - processes, in other words, which bypass the negative to produce a unique image. That last term suggests a clue to the problem; we tend to think of original as a synonym for unique, whereas a photographic print is always original, but might not be unique.
- John Stathatos
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To be of any use to an artist, photographs must be rooted in a context, in a past; there is no such thing as a context-free photograph, and abstract photography is good for nothing but record covers.
- John Stathatos -
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There is one other quality specific to the medium: its unique relationship with reality, a relationship which has little to do with 'truth', visual or otherwise, but everything to do with the emotional charge generated by the photograph's operation as a memory trace.
- John Stathatos -
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