From the first, I regarded myself as under obligation to my country to preserve the faces of its historic men and mothers

The camera is the eye of history.

No one will ever know what I went through to secure those negatives. The world can never appreciate it. It changed the whole course of my life.

My greatest aim has been to advance the art of photography and to make it what I think I have, a great and truthful medium of history.

From the first, I regarded myself as under obligation to my country to preserve the faces of its historic men and mothers

I had to go. A spirit in my feet said 'go,' and I went.