It's not hard being great occasionally. It's difficult to be good consistently.

I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense... symbolic of themselves. I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller - to find out how they are.

I see pictures of myself and I always knew that what I was feeling didn't look like that guy in the pictures.

My photographs don't go below the surface. They don't go below anything. They're readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues.

My photographs don't go below the surface. They don't go below anything. They're readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues. But whenever I become absorbed in the beauty of a face, in the excellence of a single feature, I feel I've lost what's really there been seduced by someone else's standard of beauty or by the sitter's own idea of the best in him. That's not usually the best. So each sitting becomes a contest.

A portrait isn't a fact but an opinion - an occasion rather than a truth.

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed