Starvation and disease are the original weapons of mass destruction. When you burn fields and kill animals, people are left vulnerable.

[Photography] puts a human face on issues which, from afar, can appear abstract or ideological or monumental in their global impact.

If I can upset people, if I can ruin their day, then I have done my job.

I began after college, about 1972. I began to teach myself photography. I went to work for a local newspaper for four years as a kind of basic training.

Do we really need another picture of Paris Hilton or Naomi Campbell?

If you want to connect with people who are in distress and great grief and scared, you need to do it in a certain way. I move kind of slow. I talk kind of slow. I let them know that I respect them.

For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite of war.