Top Peter van Agtmael Quotes

Peter van Agtmael Biography

Peter van Agtmael (born 1981 in Washington, DC) is a documentary photographer based in New York. Since 2006 he has concentrated on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their consequences in the United States. He is a member of Magnum Photos.

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Peter van Agtmael Quotes

I think a lot of the work I've done and a lot of the work I'm going to do in the future still ties to 9
11 and the fallout from it.

Done, Fallout, Future, Thinking, Ties

It was sometimes provoked by assignments, then I'd go back on my own dime if I really clicked with a place. And sometimes it was just hanging out with my family or friends.

Clicked, Dime, Dimes, My Family, Place, Sometimes

I began to explore America in more general terms. I really started this work in 2009. I got the bulk of it done as I was easing out of Disco Night.

America, Bulk, Done, Night, Terms, Work

The travel ban that was imposed by the [Donald Trump] administration is a very direct reverberation of 9
11.

Administration, Ban, Bans, Donald, Trump

I was taking all prints and I brought them to the Magnum meetings, trying the old Josef Koudelka trick: Give them to photographers, who are getting bored during the talks about the economics of the agency, to look through with a pen. They'll separate them in two piles. I started to find the core pictures that people seem to relate to.

Agency, Bored, Koudelka, Old, Two

[The Middle East conflict ] just kind of ran its course for me. For a long time I could justify doing it to myself, no matter how irrational it was. It was important to me and my work. And I just don't feel it in the same way any more. When it comes up and it's important to me, I'll do it, but more out of sense of duty than desire - which used to be a big part of it.

Desire, Duty, Important, Kind, Long, Work

[Buzzing at the Sill] deals with the margins of America, a lot of parts unseen. Well, parts that are seen and familiar to a lot of the populace, but unseen when it comes to the parameters of what mainstream news and popular culture and Hollywood reflects.

America, Culture, Hollywood, Mainstream, Unseen

I realized how little I knew about my own country. I had grown up in the suburbs and, after college, I moved out of the country, so I didn't really know the place well. When I started following soldiers and their families back home, it provoked a lot of the questions about who we are as a nation, questions I realized couldn't be explored through the more limited framework of looking at the military at war and at home.

Back, College, Country, Military, Nation, War

That kind of unease, that melancholy, is of course partly my interpretation, but partly, I think, it's something that's really there [in America] as well. It resonates with this moment and the sort of alienation from the power structure a lot of people feel, as well as a certain amount of desperation, in the hope of disrupting the power structure so they can live better lives. I think in those ways, it's intimately connected to today.

America, Connected, Intimately, Lives, People, Thinking

Buzzing at the Sill is from a Theodore Roethke poem called "In a Dark Time. " I'd heard a small part of it in a play, a sort of sci-fi play about morality in a virtual reality universe. Nothing to do with the book precisely, but it was a great play.

Book, Dark, Nothing, Part, Reality, Roethke

What I was doing for those assignments wasn't always directly tied to what I was doing for myself, but it gave me the space to photograph. I started getting assignments that dealt with my own interests and made some pictures in that direction.

Space, Photograph, Assignments, Interests

I went out to cover the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fundamentally [in Buzzing at the Sill] because I was interested in war as a notion and in experiencing it. I was interested in history and how societies form. I was interested in the recent history of what had provoked these wars. So when I finally got out there, I was really seeing the wars through the American perspective, much more than through being embedded with American soldiers and Marines.

Fundamentally, History, Iraq, Marine, Notion, War

The big question that everyone is asking themselves, or what they should be asking themselves right now, is what role has the media played in not just missing a certain part of American society that wanted to vote for, say, Donald Trump, but what role has the media played in dehumanizing other people and helping create these conditions that people are so afraid of, say, Muslims and extremism?

Asking, Extremism, Helping, Missing, Part, People

Nothing is over until there's something more decisive than your own thoughts.

Decisive, Nothing, Thoughts

Peter van Agtmael Biography

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