My work has no theme. I don't care if my photographs get published, and I have no interest in the news. But the invasion of Prague was not news, it was my life.

When I first started to take photographs in Czechoslovakia, I met this old gentleman, this old photographer, who told me a few practical things. One of the things he said was, "Josef, a photographer works on the subject, but the subject works on the photographer."

I have to shoot three cassettes of film a day, even when not 'photographing', in order to keep the eye in practice.

The changes taking place in this part of Europe are enormous and very rapid. One world is disappearing. I am trying to photograph what's left. I have always been drawn to what is ending, what will soon no longer exist.

I photograph only something that has to do with me, and I never did anything that I did not want to do. I do not do editorial and I never do advertising. No, my freedom is something I do not give away easily.

The maximum, that is what has always interested me.

If a picture is good, it tells many different stories.