A saboteur in the house of art and a comedienne in the house of art theory Lawler has spent three decades documenting the secret life of art. Functioning as a kind of one-woman CSI unit she has photographed pictures and objects in collectors' homes in galleries on the walls of auction houses and off the walls in museum storage.

Appropriation is the idea that ate the art world. Go to any Chelsea gallery or international biennial and you'll find it. It's there in paintings of photographs photographs of advertising sculpture with ready-made objects videos using already-existing film.

The greatest work of art about New York? The question seems nebulous. The city's magic and majesty are distilled in the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand.

Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for upsized art and more of it. I've heard of photographers asked to print larger to increase the wall power and salability of their work. Everything winds up set to maximum in order to feed the beast.

People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.

To me photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.

What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.

To me photography is the simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second of the significance of an event.

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

Photography takes an instant out of time altering life by holding it still.

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

You don't take a photograph you make it.

I was dating my first boyfriend in high school for a long time and we broke up before prom. I hadn't met anyone else that I really wanted to go with and my friends have always been amazing. So I went with my friends and got a million photos with them!

I mean we've built a lot of products that we think are good and will help people share photos and share videos and write messages to each other. But it's really all about how people are spreading Facebook around the world in all these different countries. And that's what's so amazing about the scale that it's at today.

Most photographers work best alone myself included.

I love photo sessions. I'm alone I'm the queen everyone's taking care of me.

Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone it has to be itself.

Photography alone of the arts seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.

There's one Baldessari work I genuinely love and would like to own maybe because of my Midwestern roots and love of driving alone. 'The backs of all the trucks passed while driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara California Sunday 20 January 1963' consists of a grid of 32 small color photographs depicting just what the title says.