Twentieth-century art has allowed me to see things in a cryptic way. I love the butterfly's wings, which disappear when folded and when open leave this brilliant, intense pronouncement of nature, 'Here I am.'

This is the gift of the landscape photograph, that the heart finds a place to stand.

I made 10 times as many images as the other students," he says of the early years. "I destroyed all those negatives except a few. I did it as a reminder that you can't afford to waste time: take it seriously.

I feel that whatever picture an artist makes it is in part a picture of himself - a matter of identity.

All important pictures embody something that we do not yet understand.

The picture is like a prayer, an offering, and hopefully an opening through which to seek what we don't know, or already know and should take seriously.

I was going round the world searching for an interesting place, when I realized that the place that I was in was already interesting.