I don't care how you photograph - use the kitchen mop if you must, but if the product is not true to the laws of photography... you have produced something that is dead. (1923)

I like to photograph people who have strength and dignity in their faces. Whatever life has done to them, it hasn’t destroyed them.

All light is available light.

Photography... is either an expression of a cosmic vision, an embodiment of a life movement or it is nothing - to me. (1919)

Your photography is a record of your living - for anyone who really sees. You may see and be affected by other people's ways, you may even use them to find your own, but you will have eventually to free yourself of them. That is what Nietzche meant when he said, 'I have just read Schopenhauer, now I have to get rid of him.' He knew how insidious other people's ways could be, particularly those which have the forcefulness of profound experience, if you let them get between you and your own personal vision.

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.