There are things that I teach, about building photographs, and that's why people come to my workshops. When people come to the workshops, they're consumed with seeking the subject, and I teach seeking the setting.

There are a lot of ways to talk about the life of a photograph. You can talk about the afterlife of a photograph, and in the end I talk about that, with the Richard Prince picture. But mainly, what I dedicated the book to being about was how photographs begin their life, and where they begin it. And they begin it with the photographer's imagination and instinct and experience.

The reason I don't want to say anything about it is it has a strange power to take over the conversation. Just like it's doing with us. I was asked to participate in a documentary about Richard Prince, and be the voice of someone who was appropriated, and I declined. The reason I did is I don't want it to be the subject of the discussion of my work.

For example, in my dorm, at the University of Kentucky, I had the only camera. I don't think anyone came to college with a camera, other than me.

I started teaching in '76 and I'd been a photographer at the Geographic for six years. But prior to being at the Geographic I was a teacher. Plus my parents were teachers and my brother and my grandparents. So it was the culture of our family to think about teaching, to talk about teaching, to talk about teachers.

Editorial photography has to be energetic and visually competitive.

It actually has transcended my career at the Geographic, so that when my career there ended, I had momentum as a teacher, and a belief in photographic education at the workshop level.