I am an expressionist and by that I mean that I'm not a photographer or a writer or a painter or a tap dancer, but rather someone who expresses himself according to his needs.

I write in order to express what the photo itself cannot say. A photograph of my father doesn't tell me what I thought of him, which for me is much more important than what the man looked like.

You can never capture a person in picture, never. You might get an interesting expression or gesture. I almost never research a picture subject ahead of time. I think Karsh is full of baloney. Can you imagine spending a whole week out in La Jolla with Jonas Salk soaking up his ambiance, then wind up making him look as if he's in the studio in Ottawa with his thumb under his chin?

I still find doing portraits a terrific challenge, but even though I've done hundreds of them, I've never stopped questioning the very nature of portraiture because it deals exclusively with appearances. I've never believed people are what they look like and think it's impossible to really know what people are.

Most photographs, to me, are description, but they lack insight.

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.

Taking photographs and writing is my way of saying I was here, I saw this, I felt this, I heard this.