23 Quotes by Jim Goldberg

I don't know why he isn't dead, maybe he's lucky. Certainly his physical self is dead. Before the streets, drugs, IV use, and hustling -medically - his body is not right.[...]So there is some will to live in him, to pass on his knowledge and good nature. It's a mystery. Dave is an inspiration to people. He is society's throw-away.

I mean, they say they've gotta change the street kids' lives. Well, that's true. But you can't take somebody from point A to point Z overnight. You can't make me a fucking suburban teenager now, after what's gone down. It'll never happen.

Quit looking for an answer, Jim. There fuckin' ain't one. Fuck yeah, I'm still looking for God's telephone number.

Dave: ''Will you ever be happy Echo?''Echo: ''I don’t know I haven’t tried it yet.''Dave: ''Let’s give it a shot together.''Echo: ''Let’s spread fire instead.

I show Dave the dummy for my book. He reads every bit of writing, looks at every picture, and asks no questions. When he's done, he wipes his hands on the book.

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

In Europe, I am an outsider. I don't really understand anything that I am seeing. I can be welcomed into people's homes, I can be met with suspicion, I can be taken somewhere else altogether. There is always wonderment there for me, even if the person I am photographing may not see it or be aware of it.

In order to figure this artmaking stuff out, it's trial and error and experimentation, and takes some time and hard thinking. Putting work out in many forms and stages is an extension of how I see things. I feel the art process is best served when it invites comments and constructive criticism from people.

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.