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.

That’s my idea of what a portrait ought to be, anonymous and documentary and a straightforward picture of mankind.

I'm sometimes called a 'documentary photographer' but... a man operating under that definition could take a sly pleasure in the disguise. Very often I'm doing one thing when I'm thought to be doing another.

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.

It's too presumptuous and naïve to think you can change society by a photograph or anything else... I equate that with propaganda; I think that's a lower rank of purpose.

I never took it upon myself to change the world. And those contemporaries of mine who were going around falling for the idea that they were going to bring down the United States government and make a new world were just asses to me.

It's easy to photograph light reflecting from a surface, the truly hard part is capturing the light in the air.