I don't believe there's any such thing as objective reality. It's only reality as we experience it.

I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.

But everyone cannot be there, and that is why photographers go there - to show them, to reach out and grab them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on - to create pictures powerful enough to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference - to protest and by the strength of that protest to make others protest.

The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I am benefiting from someone else's tragedy. This idea haunts me. It's something I have to reckon with every day because I know that if I ever allow genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition, I will have sold my soul. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person's predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other; and to that extent, I can accept myself.

If you make an honest picture of war, it will be an antiwar photograph.

I try to use whatever I know about photography to be of service to the people I'm photographing.

Starvation and disease are the original weapons of mass destruction. When you burn fields and kill animals, people are left vulnerable.