Whatever else a photograph may be about, it is always about time.

The very act of representation has been so thoroughly challenged in recent years by postmodern theories that it is impossible not to see the flaws everywhere, in any practice of photography. Traditional genres in particular-journalism, documentary studies, and fine-art photography-have become shells, or forms emptied of meaning.

The one thing that seems to be consistent through all my work that I like, and I experimented a lot, is the viewer is allowed to meditate on something that normally we don't stop and stare at, whether it's people or a cactus.

To me, the work I do is a means of interpreting unsettling truths, of bearing witness, and of sounding an alarm. The beauty of formal representation both carries an affirmation of life and subversively brings us face to face with news from our besieged world.

Our experience with knowledge, the way we know things, is not that neat. It doesn't fit into a grand narrative, the way we've been taught to read.

I've come to believe that beauty can be a very powerful conveyor of difficult ideas.

I think this is the most exciting time in the history of photography. Technology is expanding what photographers can do, like the microscope and the telescope expanded what scientists could do.