It is very hard to say where you're going until you get there. That kind of thing is based very much on instinct. As a photographer, one of the most important lessons I have learnt is that you have to learn to listen to and trust your own instinct. It has helped to guide me - this far at least.

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.

But everyone cannot be there, and that is why photographers go there - to show them, to reach out and grab them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on - to create pictures powerful enough to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference - to protest and by the strength of that protest to make others protest.

Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography?

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

I became a photographer in order to be a war photographer, and a photographer involved in what I thought were critical social issues. From the very beginning this was my goal.

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.