Jim Goldberg Quotations

This was in San Francisco, in 1987. A bunch of kids were camped out in the Riviera Hotel - boy hustlers and their sugar daddy. One boy, Tank, showed us his gun. 'It's not loaded,' he said. He pointed the gun to his head, then out the window, and then to the ceiling. When the gun was pointed to the ceiling, he pulled the trigger and it went off. The gun was loaded after all.

My only agenda is to bring attention to otherwise ignored and shunned lives.

It's always good to find things that you haven't found before.

I use my intuition. I tell my students: use your brains, but also use another part of yourself.

There are many images which I miss on purpose. I've done too many of them before and photographing them again doesn't change the world, or me.

Before I even took pictures I knew that I wanted to have them as hard copy memories.

[A photograph] is a part of the evidence. I'm not saying it's the truth - it's part of the evidence.

The photograph is kind of a proof - a proof that I actually met these people, that they actually have lives, and that they're worth considering.

Every single immigrant is part of a larger history that needs to be communicated in all its ambivalences and complexities.

I'm not a politically radical person. In fact, I'm much more interested in being radical aesthetically.