I enjoyed it [commercial work] until I stopped. You could travel and get around. I can't really explain why, I just didn't want to do it anymore.

Of course, you have politics, the Vietnam war and all that monkey business. There are all kinds of reasons. At every one of those demonstrations in the late Sixties about the Vietnam war, you could guarantee there'd be a series of speeches. The ostensible purpose was to protest the war. But then somebody came up and gave a black power speech, usually Black Muslims, then. And then you'd have a women's rights speech. It was terrible to listen to these things.

It's a lot of work organizing something, whether it's a show or a book, and I don't want to do it every day.

Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good

When I'm photographing, I don't have that kind of nonsense running around in my head. I'm photographing. It's irrelevant in the end, so it doesn't mean a thing. It's not going to make me do better work or worse work as I can see it now.

I have to photograph where I am.

Sometimes I feel like . . . the world is a place I bought a ticket to. It’s a big show for me, as if it wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t there with a camera.