Gerhard Richter (b. 1932)

‘There is never any such thing as equality of status. But I’ve never thought about what significance photography has for me. Painting is the form of the picture, you might say. The picture is the depiction, and the painting is the technique for shattering it. Now there’s painting on one side and photography – that is the picture as such – on the other. Photography has almost no reality; it is almost one hundred percent picture. And painting always has reality: you can touch the paint; it has presence; but it always yields a picture – no matter whether good or bad. That’s all theory. It’s no good. I once took some small photographs and smeared them with paint. That partly resolved the problem, and it’s really good – better than anything I could say on the subject’.
(G. Richter, quoted in, J. Storvse, 'Interview with Jonas Storsve', in The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, 1991, p. 227).