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.

Photography can be perceived as the opposite of war.

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.

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

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

The pictures that were coming from Vietnam were showing us what was really happening on the ground level. It was in contradiction to what our political and military leaders were telling us. They were straight forward documentary images. A powerful indictment of the war, of how cruel and unjust it was. When I finally decided what to do with my life, it was to follow in that tradition.

I try to use whatever I know about photography to be of service to the people I'm photographing.