It's quite difficult to write about photography as a photographer. A lot of better photographers than me have declined to do it.

Good photographs aren't just complex. They are enigmatic. Images are beguiling. And the way they play into our psychology, into our visual cortex, is something we still don't understand.

My current project was shot on film, and because of that I've spent my entire day removing dust-specks from negatives. You wouldn't have to do that on digital because you don't get dust on the scanner. I say to myself, "Why am I doing this all day?" I could have just bought a digital camera and I wouldn't have to remove dust-specks ever again. But when you move closer to a film image, it has a real truth to it. And I really like that.

In the same way, photography, for me, has fragmented. You do have people doing bodies of work - often with found photographs - that are quite hard to understand unless you got a very sophisticated visual history behind you. But there are different camps.

It's certainly important to include text beside documentary photographs. Furthermore, it's important to include text in a way that's useful and accessible.

After my mother died, I lived with relatives. Reading was a means of escaping into other worlds, as photography, much later, was to become.

I think it's terribly important to reach out and understand all the different types of life and the different types of challenges that are present around the world. And I think the more people who can do that the better our planet will probably be.