I've always been interested in people that you wouldn't see otherwise. If you look back at my books, photographs, and films-and since I'm doing this retrospective I've been forced to look back-the work is always about a small group of people who are somewhat isolated, and who you would never see if I didn't film or photograph 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.

I was over self-medicating back when I was a kid and didn't know it.

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.

[Eugene Smith] was always writing these diatribes about truth, and how he wanted to tell the truth, the truth, the truth. It was a real rebel position. It was kind of like a teenager's position: why can't things be like they should be? Why can't I do what I want? I latched on to that philosophy. One day I snapped, hey, you know, I know a story that no one's ever told, never seen, and I've lived it. It's my own story and my friends' story.

I learned how to skate, I couldn't do the tricks, but I could certainly skate fast enough. I could keep up with anybody and I could bomb hills and I could hide behind my camera.