I can photograph someone if I can touch them.

Approaching people is not - it's ironic that it's what I do - but it's not necessarily what I enjoy doing. Later on, I'm fine. Once we get talking I have a great time but not in the beginning.

...it is pretentious for photographers to believe that their pictures alone change things. If they did, we wouldn't be besieged by war, by incidents of genocide, by hunger. A more realistic assessment of photography's value is to point out that it is illustrative of what's going on, that it provides a record of history, that photographs can prompt dialogue.

My biggest problem is I'm so uninteresting that all these people forget I'm around.

I chose to be a photographer twenty-two years ago, but I don't know that I'd make that choice again. Back in the early eighties, I still thought I was doing okay, trying to order and shape the world with my camera. Now that I know a bit more about living and dying, about our planet and its complex problems, I'm a lot less comfortable with my images of people. Still, I haven't a clue what else to do.

I can photograph someone if I can touch them.

It's a process of getting to know people. That's what photography is to me. It's about paying attention, not screwing up and blowing a great opportunity.