Appropriation is the idea that ate the art world. Go to any Chelsea gallery or international biennial and you'll find it. It's there in paintings of photographs photographs of advertising sculpture with ready-made objects videos using already-existing film.

The greatest work of art about New York? The question seems nebulous. The city's magic and majesty are distilled in the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand.

Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for upsized art and more of it. I've heard of photographers asked to print larger to increase the wall power and salability of their work. Everything winds up set to maximum in order to feed the beast.

People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.

To me photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.

What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.

To me photography is the simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second of the significance of an event.

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

Photography takes an instant out of time altering life by holding it still.

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

You don't take a photograph you make it.

My interest in architecture has always been sculptural. Most of my photography is of architecture.

I mean certainly writing painting photography dance architecture there is an aspect of almost every art form that is useful and that merges into film in some way.

I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people real street scenes behind the curtain scenes live models paintings photographs staged setups architecture grids graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work.

Most photographers work best alone myself included.

Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone it has to be itself.

Photography alone of the arts seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.

There's one Baldessari work I genuinely love and would like to own maybe because of my Midwestern roots and love of driving alone. 'The backs of all the trucks passed while driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara California Sunday 20 January 1963' consists of a grid of 32 small color photographs depicting just what the title says.

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've been going through photos of my mother looking back on her life and trying to put it into context. Very few people age gracefully enough to be photographed through their aging.

Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas imagery for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting for one who sees quickly and acts decisively accurately.