The photograph should be more interesting or more beautiful than what was photographed

Let's put it this way - I photograph what interests me all the time. I live with the pictures to see what that thing looks like photographed. I'm saying the same thing; I'm not changing it.

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.

I'm still compulsively interested in women. It's funny, I've always compulsively photographed women. I still do.

I don't think time is involved in how the thing is made.

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!

Most photographs are of life, what goes on in the world. And that's boring, generally. Life is banal, you know. Let's say that an artist deals with banality. I don't care what the discipline is.