I tell people to frame the picture. Make the greatest, most perfect composition you can . . . and then take a step forward. It skews it a bit and makes it more interesting.

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 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.

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.

If you've seen my books through the years, I've always been a storyteller.

When I started shooting speed, amphetamine, when I was 15, almost 16, it actually calmed me down.