Every artist I suppose has a sense of what they think has been the importance of their work. But to ask them to define it is not really a fair question. My real answer would be, the answer is on the wall.

The important thing is, you have to have something important to say about the world.

Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.

I think of myself as an explorer who has spent his life on a long voyage of discovery.

The artist is one who makes a concentrated statement about the world in which he lives and that statement tends to become impersonal-it tends to become universal and enduring because it comes out of something very particular.

The existence of a medium, after all, is its absolute justification, if as so many seem to think, it needs one and all comparison of potentialities is useless and irrelevant. Whether a water-color is inferior to an oil, or whether a drawing, an etching, or a photograph is not as important as either, is inconsequent. To have to despise something in order to respect something else is a sign of impotence. [emphasis added] Let us rather accept joyously and with gratitude everything through which the spirit of man seeks to an ever fuller and more intense self-realization.

It has always been my belief that the true artist, like the true scientist, is a researcher using materials and techniques to dig into the truth and meaning of the world in which he himself lives; and what he creates, or better perhaps, brings back, are the objective results of his explorations. The measure of his talent--of his genius, if you will--is the richness he finds in such a life's voyage of discovery and the effectiveness with which he is able to embody it through his chosen medium.