I wanted so much to write that I couldn't write a word.

Many photographers are apt to confuse color with noise, and to congratulate themselves when they have almost blown you down with screeching hues alone-a bebop of electric blues, furious reds, and poison greens.

You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, although it can adopt that style.

When you say documentary, you have to have a sophisticated ear to receive that word. It should be documentary style, because documentary is police photography of a scene and a murder ... that's a real document. You see, art is really useless, and a document has use. And therefore, art is never a document, but it can adopt that style. I do it. I'm called a documentary photographer. But that presupposes a quite subtle knowledge of this distinction.

I think there is a period of esthetic discovery that happens to a man and he can do all sorts of things at white heat.

Nobody should touch a Polaroid [camera] until he's over sixty

The meaning of quality in photography's best pictures lies written in the language of vision. That language is learned by chance, not system.