I became interested in photography when I was sharing a studio with Walker Evans, and found my own sketching was inadequate.

All art is based on non-conformity.

Of course I realize that photography is not the technical facility as much as it is the eye, and this decision that one makes for the moment at which you are going to snap, you know.

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

Now, when I came on to Washington to begin my job, I was so interested in photography at that time that I really would have preferred to work with Stryker than with my department, which was more artistic if you wish.

We tried to present the ordinary in an extraordinary manner. But that's the paradox because the only thing extraordinary about it was that it was so ordinary. Nobody had ever done it before, deliberately. Now it's called documentary, which I suppose is all right ... We just took pictures that cried out to be taken.

I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.