I don't like directing a lot of people. So trying to keep things really simple and elegant is my preferred way of working.

It's fair to say that black folks operate under a cloud of invisibility - this too is part of the work, is indeed central to [my photographs]... This invisibility - this erasure out of the complex history of our life and time - is the greatest source of my longing.

How you get work done is by exploiting yourself and your feelings, and sometimes people get in the way.

The camera gave me an incredible freedom. It gave me the ability to parade through the world and look at people and things very, very closely.

I've been busy for a long, long time. I've received a ton of awards in the past few years ... I think they're really great, it's really an honor, but s**t - I really have to work for these things.

Sometimes my work needs to be photographic, sometimes it needs words, sometimes it needs to have a relationship to music, sometimes it needs to have all three and become a video projection.

Art is the one place we all turn to for solace.