The language that photography has is a formal language. Any photographer is doing something formal. If it's formal, then it must be an aesthetic way to communicate.

Photography is full of symbolism, it's a symbolic language. You have to be able to materialize all your thoughts in one single image.

I have tried to bring about better communication between people. I believe that humanitarian photography is like economics. Economy is a kind of sociology, as is documentary photography.

I am a former economist. I never went to photography school to learn photography.

I can be an artist a posteriori, not a priori. If my pictures tell the story, our story, human story, then in a hundred years, then they can be considered an art reference, but now they are not made as art. I'm a journalist. My life's on the road, my studio is the planet.

In the end, the only heritage we have is our planet, and I have decided to go to the most pristine places on the planet and photograph them in the most honest way I know, with my point of view, and of course it is in black and white, because it is the only thing I know how to do.

As in any person's life, there have been difficult moments: I have a son with Down's syndrome; through my photography, I have witnessed all manner of human degradation. But there have also been very happy moments.