The majority of the people I've taken photographs of, I've had conversations with. "What are your goals and aspirations?" "What are you about?" It's not just about me capturing the image; I want to know what you are about.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My camera is my compass; it's guided me to so many different places.