A biography for Jock Sturgeshasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“I'm guilty of extraordinary naivete, I suppose. But it's a naivete that I really don't want to abandon, not even now.”
“As soon as you forbid something, you make it extraordinarily appealing. You also bring shame in as a phenomenon.”
“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.”
“There's no particular evidence that any of the lower mammals or any of the other animals have any interest in aesthetics at all. But Homo sapiens does, always has and always will.”
“When I started doing my work years ago, I had doubts as to whether the informed-consent question was answerable.”
“I'm the last person who has any desire to instruct anybody in shame. That's no errand for me.”
“What I'm good at is making art.”
“I found myself serving a sentence of public denial from the very second the raid on my apartment happened.”
“A virulent, aggressive minority has decided that Americans don't know themselves what it is they should see, and need to be protected by people who are wiser than they are, even if they are only a tiny sliver of the population.”
“But the truth is that Homo sapiens is a sensual species. I think all species are, to one degree or another.”
“I don't photograph any two people who are remotely the same.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The transactions between me and the people that I photograph are very, very collaborative.”
“It's really, really hard to make it as a fine-art photographer exclusively.”
“Any artist that's involved in their work is inevitably going to have a focus in what they do.”
“Now, I recognize that there are certain postures and angles that make people see red, which are evidence of original sin or something, and I avoid that. I don't shoot that any more.”
“I didn't think there was anything more or less obscene about any part of the body. Now, I recognize that there are certain postures and angles that make people see red, which are evidence of original sin or something, and I avoid that.”