I wanted to go amongst gangbangers, to understand this war they were fighting amongst each other. I wanted to document it, [also] to show the human side of it.

The photograph is to a great degree evidence of the conversation I had with the person. It's a part of my visual diary.

The images of war inspired me to create, to go to different situations and communities, to document the human side of people, to show a side that we don't see.

I think what it was with the war photography was the concerned eye, the desire to document these situations to show the world the horrors of war. It inspired me to document prostitution; inspired me to document homelessness in America. We are the richest country in the world, yet we have people suffering, so it helped me to look at things in that manner.

I'm shooting a gangbanger, but as a dignified man. That's pretty much what war photography did: seeing images of soldiers in a dignified way. They might have been killers in Vietnam, but I'm seeing another side of them, and looking at images of the the American soldiers, also the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong - I never saw an enemy.

There is just something about the common being. My education pretty much came from the streets, just connecting with people, different cultures. I gained the wealth just engaging at that level. I'm still like that. I continue to document everyday people versus the stars.

What I strive to do through my work, is to teach compassion. You need to have a lot of it, in this day and time, and it's lacking.