The reason I often say, for me, photography is analogous to poetry, for my kind of work more so than journalism, is because it's so open to interpretation. And I'm very happy having different interpretations of it.

I didn't want to pretend to be a conceptual artist that charges $10,000 for an experience. It's just not what I am. I'm a photographer and I make prints. And people buy a print, and I understand that. But I'm uncomfortable with buying an experience.

This is the same problem I have with digital photography. The potential is always remarkable. But the medium never settles. Each year there is a better camera to buy and new software to download. The user never has time to become comfortable with the tool. Consequently too much of the work is merely about the technology. The HDR and QTVR fads are good examples. Instead of focusing on the subject, users obsess over RAW conversion, Photoshop plug-ins, and on and on. For good work to develop the technology needs to become as stable and functional as a typewriter.

[Photography is] very related to poetry. It's suggestive and fragmentary and unsatisfying in a lot of ways. It's as much about what you leave out as what you put in.

People can talk about the death of social life or whatever; it's not necessarily how I see it. It's more musical in the sense, where it's a feeling about the place I live, slash, who I am in the place.

You can photograph anything. You can be inside, outside, doesn't matter, you're controlling the light. It gives you great flexibility. That was a primary motivation.

Every once in a while I have this revelation like, "Wow, a hundred years ago the world wasn't black and white." It was in color. Photographed in a certain way, people look from another time. We are just not used to seeing ourselves in that context. Something that's fascinating about photography is you can isolate a moment, tear it out of its context, and see it afresh. Another realization is that, "Wow, there's a big world out there, and people are still doing all sorts of the things that they used to do." We don't just live in iPad land.