I love the idea I can go off with a single camera and a few rolls of film unencumbered... I was not interested in the illusion of reality, I wanted to get close to what was happening.

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

The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

It's the hardest thing in the world to take the mundane and try to show how special it is.

It doesn't matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.

I didn't want to be a woman photographer. That would limit me. I wanted to be a photographer who was a woman, with all the world open to my camera.

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