I wanted to make photographs that were immediate and revealing - different from traditional portraiture that called for formal distance between artist and subject.

The most optimistic thing that's happened is that as a society we're beginning to recognize that there are many voices. When I began, thirty years ago, the idea of one author or the artist as being a solitary creature was really the only idea that there was.

I wanted to make photographs that were immediate and revealing - different from traditional portraiture that called for formal distance between artist and subject.

Sometimes I think I disguise myself as a teacher in order to make the pictures I need to see.

Gradually I saw that it was less interesting for me, as an artist, to frame the world wholly according to my own perceptions. I wanted instead to create situations in which I allowed others' perceptions to surface with my own.