There are two kinds of photographs: mine and other people's. I never think of what I might do myself when I look at someone else's pictures... there is no subject in the world I have ever wanted to photograph. It's the picture, not the object, that is important to me.

I was photographing the photographer Brassaï. He had very prominent eyes, like a frog's. As I focused my lens, he brought his hand up and pretended to focus his eye. It was a joke, but it added mystery to the picture. There's a sense of action in a very small world. Or with Allen Ginsberg there were people smoking cigarettes and in the smoke there's a sense of motion. It makes much out of very little.

Teachers don't work in the summer, and photographers don't shoot in in the middle of the day.

In a painting no one complains that the subject is posed, but everybody complains about what looks posed in a photograph. Except, I've found that if I go very close in to the face, then the posed expression no longer exists. The face becomes a landscape of the lakes of the eyes and the hills of the nose and the valley of the cleft of the chin.

In my head I think, There is a beautiful picture here and by God, short of murder, I'm going to get it. So shut up and hold still! But what I say is: You look wonderful. It'll just take a minute. It's marvelous. We're doing something very special.

When I teach a class I often give the assignment: Photograph someone you love. I ask people to do this so they have a subject about whom they have feelings, a subject that is more than a model, or an object, or a shape, or an idea. In this way, they can judge the result not only by its technical success, but also by how well it describes their feelings.

If you want something to look interesting, don’t light all of it.