If I was concerned about being accepted, I would have been doing Ansel Adams lookalikes, because that was easily accepted. Everything I did was never accepted...but luckily for me, my interest in the subject and my passion for the subject took me to the point that I wasn't wounded by that, and eventually, people came around to me.

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.

I already know what things look like - I don't want description. People believe in appearances, and I don't believe in appearances at all.

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

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

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.

And in not learning the rules, I was free. I always say, you're either defined by the medium or you redefine the medium in terms of your needs.