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.

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.

Enthusiasm is the electricity of life

You have a 45mm automatic pistol on your lap, and I have a 35mm camera on my lap, and my weapon is just as powerful as yours. (To Black Panther militant Eldridge Cleaver)

I bought my first camera in Seattle, Washington. Only paid about seven dollars and fifty cents for it.

The camera could be a very powerful instrument against discrimination, against poverty, against racism.

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