My greatest lesson in composition was looking at paintings.

For me there are no rules. I think I learned that from artists-from painters and sculptors. It took photography a while to catch up to them.

The work all comes from a psychological need. See the images that I make... It's really a psychological need. I'm just jerked around by it. I'm pulled by it.

At the end of the day, what I show is real life. I tell the truth. And the truth can be shocking.

If you're going to photograph skateboarders you can't run after them, you've got to learn how to skate. So at about 50 years old I learned how to skate, and skate fast enough to keep up with them and hold my camera.

I just happened to have my camera and be photographing my friends. It was totally innocent; there was no purpose to the photographs. There was a purity to them that wasn’t planned; it was realism.

If I want something I do everything to get it.