If you are careful with people, they will offer you part of themselves. That is the big secret.

I don't see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens.

I came to photography by accident.

If the chemistry is right between star and photographer and the geometry of the pictures pleases the star, often the two people end up with a long-term professional friendship during which they continue to work together and to produce highly personal images.

I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives; I am a woman and I wanted to know about women.

What drove me and kept me going over the decades? If I had to use a single word, it would be 'curiosity.

Recording sessions were stimulating to photograph, because everything was in motion: the subject, the musicians, the technicians and the photographer. You needed fast reflexes to keep up with moving targets, and sensitivity and skill to get the pictures while keeping out of the performers' eyeline so as not to break their concentration.