By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New York Times, every single day reading their jazz reviews even though I didn't put them in the films. I wanted to know what is going on.

It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past

We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?

I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style.

In a sense I've made the same film over and over again. In all of them I've asked, 'Who are we as Americans?

The way I work, the interview never becomes larger than the person being interviewed.