I've been with Life now for seventeen years and I have written several articles for them and will be doing more writing and do at least two assignments a year besides my writing.

The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.

I suffered evils, but without allowing them to rob me of the freedom to expand.

So I went to Chicago in 1940, I think, '41, and the photographs that I made there, aside from fashion, were things that I was trying to express in a social conscious way.

I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty. I could have just as easily picked up a knife or a gun, like many of my childhood friends did... most of whom were murdered or put in prison... but I chose not to go that way. I felt that I could somehow subdue these evils by doing something beautiful that people recognize me by, and thus make a whole different life for myself, which has proved to be so.

You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.

I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty.