I really try to divorce myself from any thought of possible use of this stuff. That's part of the discipline. My only purpose while I'm working is to try to make interesting photographs, and what to do with them is another act - an alter consideration. Certainly while I'm working, I want them to be as useless as possible.

I don't have anything to say in any picture. But you do, from your experience, surmise something. You do give a photograph symbolic content, narrative content... But it's nothing to worry about!

There was a camera club at Columbia, where I was taking a painting course. And when I went down, somebody showed me how to use the stuff. That's all. I haven't done anything else since then, It was as simple as that. I fell into the business.

There's no way a photograph has to look... in a sense. There are no formal rules of design that can apply.

It's very easy to make successful photographs - it's very easy.

Teaching doesn't relate to photographing, at least not for me.

I don't think anything happens without the press, one way or the other. I think it's all done for it. You saw it start, really, with Martin Luther King in Birmingham. He did the bus thing. And I don't think anything that followed would have happened if the press hadn't paid attention.