Redheaded Peckerwood, which unerringly walks the fine line between fiction and nonfiction, is a disturbingly beautiful narrative about unfathomable violence and its place on the land

Redheaded Peckerwood, which unerringly walks the fine line between fiction and nonfiction, is a disturbingly beautiful narrative about unfathomable violence and its place on the land

I try to take pictures on their own terms, considering the historical and social context from which they emerge.

I thought of New York as a free city, like one of those prewar nests of intrigue and licentiousness where exiles and lamsters and refugees found shelter in a tangle of improbable juxtapositions. I had never gotten around to changing my nationality from the one assigned me at birth, but I would have declared myself a citizen of New York City had such a stateless state existed, its flag a solid black.

My method is the magpie's: I look for shiny things. That is, I look for concrete material details of daily life, and I look for vigorous prose, which is the only kind I can read for very long. That effectively bars a great deal of scholarly work, but I didn't feel its loss.

I've always assumed it to be an absolute requirement for being a writer: to find all emotions and the sources of all behaviors somewhere within yourself.

I confess I prefer to engage with pictures which I've chosen myself out of the welter of unidentified pictures, without the intrusion of too much personal context - Ilike to be a detective, and dislike being an impresario.