Usually when painters use photographs, they enlarge and copy them and simply make a large, boring painting of a large, boring photograph.

Most portraits are lies. People are rarely what they appear to be, especially in front of a camera. You might know me your entire lifetime and never reveal yourself to me. To interpret wrinkles as character is insult not insight.

I never photograph sunsets and I never photograph moonrises. I'm not interested in what things look like.

Photography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old man’s face, or an Arbus freak, or the way light hits a building—and then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. It’s the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing.

Photography is very presumptuous. Photographers are always photographing other people's lives - something they know nothing about - and drawing great inferences into it.

To fulfil a fantasy is the quickest way to destroy it.

One of the marvelous things about film is that if you expose it long enough you're going to get a picture.