Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.
There’s a kind of power thing about the camera. I mean everyone knows you’ve got some edge. You’re carrying some magic which does something to them. It fixes them in a way.
If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.
The thing that’s important to know is that you never know. You’re always sort of feeling your way.
One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed.
If I didn’t have a camera, the things I do would be crazy.
It gets to seem as if way back in the Garden of Eden after the fall, Adam and Eve had begged the Lord to forgive them and He, in his boundless exasperation, had said, “All right, then. Stay. Stay in the Garden. Get civilized. Procreate. Muck it up.” And they did.
I mean, it’s very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.
We stand on a precipice, then before a chasm, and as we wait it becomes higher, wider, deeper, but I am crazy enough to think it doesn’t matter which way we leap because when we leap we will have learned to fly. Is that blasphemy or faith?
It’s always seemed to me that photography tends to deal with facts whereas film tends to deal with fiction.
I mean, if you’ve ever spoken to someone with two heads, you know they know something you don’t.
Lately I’ve been struck with how I really love what you can’t see in a photograph. An actual physical darkness. And it’s very thrilling for me to see darkness again.
I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse.
I think all families are creepy in a way.
Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.
I’m very little drawn to photographing people that are known or even subjects that are known. They fascinate me when I’ve barely heard of them.
The camera is cruel, so I try to be as good as I can to make things even.
Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies.
These are characters in a fairy tale for grown-ups. Wouldn’t it be lovely? Yes.
It would be beautiful to photograph the winners of everything from Nobel to booby prize, clutching trophy, or money or certificate, solemn or smiling or tear stained or bloody, on the precarious pinnacle of the human landscape.