It never seemed important to me that my photos be published. It's important that I take them. There were periods where I didn't have money, and I would imagine that someone would come to me and say: 'Here is money, you can go do your photography, but you must not show it.' I would have accepted right away. On the other hand, if someone had come to me saying: 'Here is money to do your photography, but after your death it must be destroyed,' I would have refused.

What matters most to me is to take photographs; to continue taking them and not to repeat myself. To go further, to go as far as I can.

The maximum, that is what has always interested me.

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

I would like to see everything, look at everything, I want to be the view itself.

I never stay in one country more than three months. Why? Because I was interested in seeing, and if I stay longer I become blind.

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."