I struggle against photography. I struggle against the fact that it is silent, that it is just a piece of paper on the wall, often presented in a tedious white matt frame.

The representational-image urge is actually a kind of heightened perception, and I don't stop to think. I don't freeze up - it's actually a kind of letting-go. It's like dancing. At a certain point it's conscious, unconscious, everything is kind of coming together.

The pilot says, "Where do you want to go?" and that's always a rather existential question, because naturally I think a bit about where I want to go, but of course I can't really know where I want to go, in advance. I know it when I see it.

I realized that if I wanted to truly talk about vastness and the sublime and scale and the West - recurrent themes in my overall work - I needed to engage with the vast ocean that is Los Angeles.

I am a photographer who likes to make images, but I also want to get a sense and understanding of images that have already been made. I don't fabricate worlds; I pay attention to the things that already surround us.

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

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.