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.

If Im feeling outraged, grief, disbelief, frustration, sympathy, that gets channeled through me and into my pictures and hopefully transmitted to the viewer.

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

If there is something occurring that is so bad that it could be considered a crime against humanity, it has to be transmitted with anguish, with pain, and create an impact in people - upset them, shake them up, wake them out of their everyday routine.

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.

The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I am benefiting from someone else's tragedy. This idea haunts me. It's something I have to reckon with every day because I know that if I ever allow genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition, I will have sold my soul. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person's predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other; and to that extent, I can accept myself.

I dont think tragic situations are necessarily devoid of beauty.