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.

A work can do many things at once, and it doesn't have to be just about the world, it could also be about photography, it could be about perception, it could be an exploration of the medium. It could be a document, it could be a visual poetry, and it could be a formal exploration all at the same time.

I've been the head of the photography program at Bard College for over 30 years, and I take that as seriously as I do my photography. My time is devoted to that too.

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.

As not a native, I have the advantage of not seeing scenes habitually. I can see things fresh.

I don't know how much a photograph can add to a biography, the way a film or writing or narrative medium could. Because it's a frozen image.

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.