A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.

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.

We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make.

I now want to be a photographer of my time, and our common culture.

Richard Prince's most famous photograph was made by me.

For spiritual companions I have had the many artists who have relied on nature to help shape their imagination. And their most elaborate equipment was a deep reverence for the world through which they passed. Photographers share something with these artists. We seek only to see and to describe with our own voices, and, though we are seldom heard as soloists, we cannot photograph the world in any other way.

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.