The idea that the snapshot would be thought of as a cult or movement is very tiresome to me and, I'm sure, confusing to others. It's a swell word I've always liked. It probably came about because it describes a basic fact of photography. In a snap, or small portion of time, all that the camera can consume in breadth and bite and light is rendered in astonishing detail: all the leaves on a tree, as well as the tree itself and all its surroundings.

Photographs also show the way that the camera sees. It's not just me or you or anybody else. The camera does something that is different from our own setting.

I suspect it is for one's self-interest that one looks at one's surroundings and one's self. This search is personally born and is indeed my reason and motive for making photographs.

I take more to the subject than to my ideas about it. I am not interested in any idea I have had, the subject is so demanding and so important.

When you take a picture you haven't a clue that it is going to be what it is. Maybe you have a clue but you don't really know. There are too many possibilities. Part of the game is how many balls you can juggle. It is to me. When you are 12 you can juggle two. Maybe when you are 50 you can juggle five. That is an interesting concept to me: how much I can put in and still make it pull together?

You don’t have to go looking for pictures. The material is generous. You go out and the pictures are staring at YOU.

I always wanted to be a photographer. I was fascinated with the materials, but I never dreamed I would be having this much fun. I imagined something much less elusive, much more mundane.