I don't have to have a single point of emphasis in the picture. It can be complex, because it's so detailed that the viewer can take time and read it, and look at something here, and look at something there, and they can pay attention to a lot more.

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.

With a painting, you're taking basic building blocks and making something that's more complex than what you started with. It is a synthetic process. A photograph does the opposite: It takes the world, and puts an order on it, simplifies it.

I have to be reminded, “’It’s your son’s birthday party. Bring a camera.’ And then, when I’m there, ‘Take a picture,’ because it doesn’t occur to me to use it as this memorializing thing.

I was photographing every meal I ate, every person I met, every waiter or waitress who served me, every bed I slept in, every toilet I used.

I'm not interested in doing the same kind of picture over and over again. I pose problems for myself. Sometimes they are aesthetic problems and sometimes they are logistical problems.

I meet young artists and it becomes clear that with some the main motivation is getting a show in Chelsea. It strikes me that this is very different to the way it was for me, which was that I wanted to understand photography and the world and myself.