In my portraits I try to avoid the fleeting expression and vivacity of a snapshot.

It is the gift of seeing the life around them clearly and vividly, as something that is exciting in its own right. It is an innate gift, varying in intensity with the individual's temperament and environment.

It is part of the photographer's job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of a child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country We are most of us too busy, too worried, too intent on proving ourselves right, too obsessed with ideas to stand and stare Very rarely are we able to free our minds of thoughts and emotions and just see for the simple pleasure of seeing. And so long as we fail to do this, so long will the essence of things be hidden from us.

Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dare.

Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved.

No amount of toying with shades of print or with printing papers will transform a commonplace photograph into anything other than a commonplace photograph.

Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.