There’s a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle.
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.
I think the most beautiful inventions are the ones you don’t think of.
The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.
The camera is a kind of license.
And the revelation was a little like what saints receive on mountains – a further chapter in the history of the mystery.
Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them. I don’t quite mean they’re my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe.
One thing that struck me early is that you don’t put into a photograph what’s going to come out. Or, vice versa, what comes out is not what you put in.
Ladies and Gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice.
One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud.
Shoot for the secrets, develop for the surprises.
I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.
Nudists are fond of saying that when you come right down to it everyone is alike, and, again, that when you come right down to it everyone is different.
Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience.
Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that’s what people observe.
The discouragement masquerades as the impossibility.
When you’re growing up your mother says, “Wear rubbers or you’ll catch cold.” When you become an adult you discover that you have the right not to wear rubbers and to see if you catch cold or not. It’s something like that.