I think most serious photographers understand that there's this large gap between the world and how the world looks through a photograph.

The context in which a photograph is seen affects the meaning the viewer draws from it.

Why can't a photograph be all four things at once? -be an art object; be a document, what ever that means exactly, but deal with content; be a formalist exploration; and operate on some, metaphor is not the right word but, resonant level.

Photography is inherently an analytic discipline. Where a painter starts with a blank canvas and builds a picture, a photographer starts with the messiness of the world and selects a picture. A photographer standing before houses and streets and people and trees and artifacts of a culture imposes an order on the scene - simplifies the jumble by giving it structure. He or she imposes this order by choosing a vantage point, choosing a frame, choosing a moment of exposure, and by selecting a plane of focus.

A quote that I like very much comes close to explaining my attitude about taking photographs. ‘Chinese poetry rarely trespasses beyond the bounds of actuality the great Chinese poets accept the world exactly as they find it in all its terms and with profound simplicity they seldom talk about one thing in terms of another; but are able enough and sure enough as artists to make the ultimately exact terms become the beautiful terms.’

I know that people think of my work from the '70s as American, but I've been going to other places for a long time.

Photographers have to impose order, bring structure to what they photograph. It is inevitable. A photograph without structure is like a sentence without grammar-it is incomprehensible, even inconceivable.