Sometimes I enjoy just photographing the surface because I think it can be as revealing as going to the heart of the matter.

When you are younger, the camera is like a friend and you can go places and feel like you're with someone, like you have a companion.

I admired the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon as much as I respected the grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour.

I am impressed with what happens when someone stays in the same place and you took the same picture over and over and it would be different, every single frame.

It's a heavy weight, the camera. Now we have modern and lightweight, small plastic cameras, but in the '70s they were heavy metal.

When I was younger, I did things with a camera I would not do by myself. I remember going down to the docks in San Francisco and asking a fisherman if he would take me out on his boat. I would never do that without a camera.

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.