Michael Lesy quotes:

By itself, an ordinary snapshot is no less banal than the petite madeleine in Proust's In Search of Lost Time... but as goad to memory, it is often the first integer in a sequence of recollections that has the power to deny time for the sake of love.

For years and years and years... people showed me pictures that had been left unclaimed at big photo-finishers. Sometimes I think it changed my personality, sometimes I wonder if it didn't damage my brain.

Cameras don't take pictures, people take pictures.

Photographers represented occasions once. You dressed for them as you might for church; they cost money, they recorded important moments.

Look, I really do not care about you. What I care about is the worlds that you bear witness to. You are nothing more than a dog with a video camera strapped on its back. As you walk the streets looking for a place to mate or piss or eat, the camera is on and we will see the world because of you... You carry the camera and we enjoy the world. (On images as autobiography)

My idea of a good job would be to be paid really well to sit on my ass all day to look at pictures.