Exotic novelty. My statement to [people] is always, well, set this picture in your home town, is it still an interesting picture? Or is it just exotic? Would I care about this same picture minus its exoticism?

That's who comes to my workshops. I jokingly tell my students that the class could be called "Your photographs: Better."

Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.

I think of myself as a writer who photographs. Images, for me, can be considered poems, short stories or essays. And I've always thought the best place for my photographs was inside books of my own creation.

It's more difficult now, to be a Geographic photographer, than it was when I came along. And it wasn't easy at that time.

I was known as a 35-mm photographer with a view-camera mentality.

I wanted life to be episodic. I wanted to be a magazine photographer and I was willing to do what it took to become that.