What do you hang on the walls of your mind?
I didn’t want to be a woman photographer. That would limit me. I wanted to be a photographer who was a woman, with all the world open to my camera.
I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives; I am a woman and I wanted to know about women.
I think if I ever get satisfied, I’ll have to stop. It’s the frustration that drives you.
You can’t make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn’t there.
Themes recur again and again in my work.
What drove me and kept me going over the decades? If I had to use a single word, it would be ’curiosity.
You should never reveal your true age.
Lesson number one: Pay attention to the intrusion of the camera.
It doesn’t matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.
Being a woman is just a marvelous plus in photographing. Men like to be photographed by women, it becomes flirtatious and fun, and women feel less as if they’re expected to be in a relationship.
I realize that I had the best of serious picture journalism.
It’s the hardest thing in the world to take the mundane and try to show how special it is.
I came to photography by accident.
I can’t hold a camera anymore.
I don’t see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens.
I had in mind a long career.
What you need to be a good photographer is an overwhelming curiosity and a good digestion.
What has changed is that when I photographed, most people that I photographed didn’t have the right of refusal on their work. It would take a Marilyn Monroe at her height to be able to dictate that.
If the chemistry is right between star and photographer and the geometry of the pictures pleases the star, often the two people end up with a long-term professional friendship during which they continue to work together and to produce highly personal images.
I realise that I had the best of serious picture journalism. There was an innocence in our approach, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when we naively believed that by holding a mirror up to the world we could help – no matter how little – to make people aware of the human condition.