I used to hate doing color. I hated transparency film. The way I did color was by not wanting to know what kind of film was in my camera.

It began when I was so ill that there was a good chance of dying. I promised myself that if I survived I would never again pander to a magazine's requests or follow the ideas of art directors. I would only make images which were personal, which arose out of my own life.

Some people's photography is an art. Not mine. Art is a dirty word in photography. All this fine art crap is killing it already.

It's quite true that what I am aiming at, even when I take portraits, is to get a scandalous picture. I would love to be a paparazzo.

It's that I don't like white paper backgrounds. A woman does not live in front of white paper. She lives on the street, in a motor car, in a hotel room.

In my vocabulary there are two bad words: art and good taste.

They often ask me to shoot for them. But I say no. I think an old guy like me ought not take pages away from young photographers who need the exposure.