Even in this age of digital manipulation, photographs continue to hold a huge degree of power and meaning. They're beautiful and sad and complicated because every stoppage of time refers to the motion of time.

Flying was certainly formative for me; I have a deep and lasting ease with it as a result.

I take pleasure in working with the non-art photographs that reside in public archives, essentially authorless and owned by the world itself, because I find the world of fine art photography to be pretty silly and pretentious.

Los Angeles functions for me as a kind of holy template. It is postwar America.

... anybody who has spent time with cameras and photographs knows that images, like gravestone rubbings, are no more than impressions of the truth.

I've always been amazed at the vastness of America itself and what it does and how it does it. I'm interested in the mechanics of what makes this country happen, the power structures, the natural splendor.

We have not only the right, but a specific duty, to honestly and unflinchingly look at all aspects of our world, both the one we create as humans and the one we are lucky enough to inhabit as a species.