I love the city. I love the energy of New York and what happens here. But I'm very happy I don't live in the city on a daily basis, because I really do spend a great deal of my time, when I'm not on the road, in my studio - everyday, everyday, everyday.

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.

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

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.

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.

Photography can still be used to champion activism and change. I believe this, even while standing in the cool winds of postmodernism... Postmodernism looked radical, but it wasn't. As a movement it was profoundly liberal and became a victim of itself. Precisely at this historical moment, when multicultural democracy is the order of the day, photography can be used as a powerful weapon toward instituting political and cultural change. I for one will continue to work toward this end.

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