Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

Pema Chodron

A gift, without work, is just a bad habit.

The blindness is apparent when someone lets slip the word ’snapshot’. Ignorance can always be covered by ’snapshot’. The word has never had any meaning. I am at war with the obvious.

– From a conversation with Mark Holborn, Greenwood, Mississippi, February 1988

“What matters I think is not the process, but the end result… Otherwise, Warhol’s soap boxes etc, would be of no interest at all, if we were to judge art by how easy it is to create…Since the process is almost always invisible in art, the sense of wonder, for me at least, remains – an extraordinary idea, a beautiful thought, a skilled hand… ”

source: Conscientious Extended | A Conversation with Phil Toledano.

I found it over at A Photo Editor … Sometimes things go around and around. And sometimes that is ok.

Of course I only agree to the quote partially. I agree that this is the way I think when I look at finished material, especially at the material of others. When it comes to my own work, I find the process tremendously interesting! I have to, after all, when I am speaking about “the process” I am speaking about my life. The process is my life. Simple as that. So it better be interesting! The resulting work is merely the Journal … A receipt for a specific slice of time on this earth.

That’s the only purpose of any form of art: that it adds something to people’s lives. People can also hate it. You don’t need to have consensus with the show, But you do need to produce a difference in the experience of the single individual.

Francesco Bonami

Francesco Bonami is the designated curator for the Whitney Biennial 2010