You're talking about meaning. I want to talk about the picture.

In the simplest sentence, I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed. Basically, that's why I photograph, in the simplest language. That's the beginning of it and then we get to play the games.

Museum of Modern Art doesn't have anything to do with what I do. Probably has made some differences in my sales, I wouldn't be surprised. Again, you have to ask other people, because I don't have a measuring device.

In the end, maybe the correct language would be how the fact of putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms it. A photograph is not what was photographed, it's something else.

If you take a good look at the book [ Stock Photographs], it's largely a portrait gallery of faces - faces that I found dramatic. And some of those turned out to be reasonably dramatic photographs. But that's all it is, I think.

If I photograph you I don't have you, I have a photograph of you. It's got its own thing. That's really what photography, still photography, is about.

Now and then I'll get a student who asks a question that puts me up against the wall and maybe by the end of the semester I can begin to deal with the question.