I think maybe the rural influence in my life helped me in a sense, of knowing how to get close to people and talk to them and get my work done.

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.

Enthusiasm is the electricity of life

I'd become sort of involved in things that were happening to people. No matter what color they be, whether they be Indians, or Negroes, the poor white person or anyone who was I thought more or less getting a bad shake.

And I think that after nearly 85 years upon this planet that I have a right after working so hard at showing the desolation and the poverty, to show something beautiful for somebody as well.

I had known poverty firsthand, but there I learned how to fight its evil - along with the evil of racism - with a camera.

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