The things that are close to you are the things you can photograph the best.

I like to make people a little uncomfortable. It encourages them to examine who they are and why they think the way they do.

There are a number of things that set Southern artists apart from anyone else. Their obsession with place and their obsession with family.

Every image is in some way a “portrait,” not in the way that it would reproduce the traits of a person, but in that it pulls and draws (this is the semantic and etymological sense of the word), in that it extracts something, an intimacy, a force.

Like all photographers, I depend on serendipity, and when you're photographing children there's often an abundance of it. I would have an idea of what a photograph would look like and then something would happen - a dog might lumber in and become a critical element. I pray for what might be referred to as the angel of chance.

One of the things my career as an artist might say to young artists is: The things that are close to you are the things you can photograph the best. And unless you photograph what you love, you are not going to make good art.

Photographs open doors into the past, but they also alloq a look into the future