I enjoy photographing. It's always interesting, so I can't say one thing is more fun than another. Everything has it's own difficulties.
A pun calls the meaning of a word into question, and it upsets us tremendously. We laugh because suddenly we find out we're not going to get killed. I think a lot of things work that way with photographs.
Well, I'm not going to get into that. I think that those kind of distinctions and lists of titles like "street photographer" are so stupid. I'm a photographer, a still photographer. That's it.
The contest between form and content is what, is what art is about - it's art history. That's what basically everybody has ever contended with. The problem is uniquely complex in still photography.
When I see something, I know why something's funny or seems to be funny. But in the end it's just another picture as far as I'm concerned.
At times I'd much rather talk about other work.
If you take a good look at the book [ Stock Photographs], it's largely a portrait gallery of faces - faces that I found dramatic. And some of those turned out to be reasonably dramatic photographs. But that's all it is, I think.
Teaching is only interesting because you struggle with trying to talk about photographs, photographs that work, you see.
What you photograph is responsible for how a photograph looks - the form, the design, whatever word you want to use.
The only thing that happens when I'm teaching is that I hope there are some students out there in the class who will ask questions.
The only thing that's difficult is reloading when things are happening. Can you get it done fast enough?
There are things I back off from trying to talk about, you know. Particularly my own work. Also, there may be things better left unsaid. At times I'd much rather talk about other (people's) work.
Aside from women, I don't know. My work doesn't function the way Robert Frank's did.
Of course, you have politics, the Vietnam war and all that monkey business. There are all kinds of reasons. At every one of those demonstrations in the late Sixties about the Vietnam war, you could guarantee there'd be a series of speeches. The ostensible purpose was to protest the war. But then somebody came up and gave a black power speech, usually Black Muslims, then. And then you'd have a women's rights speech. It was terrible to listen to these things.
I knew that was coming. That's another stupidity. The people who use the term don't even know the meaning. They use it to refer to photographs they believe are loosely organized, or casually made, whatever you want to call it. Whatever terms you like. The fact is, when they're talking about snapshots they're talking about the family album picture, which is one of the most precisely made photographs.
I think there's some stuff that's at least photographically interesting. There are things I back off from trying to talk about.
I don't care how they think of it. Some of these people are acquiring some very good pictures by a lot of different photographers.
I don't have anything to say in any picture.
Everybody's entitled to their own experience.
You use the vertical edge as the point of reference, instead of the horizontal edge. I have a picture of a beggar, where there's an arm coming into the frame from the side. And the arm is parallel to the horizontal edge and it makes it work. It's all games, you know. But it keeps it interesting to do, to play.
Just think how minimal somebody's family album is. But you start looking at one of them, and the word everybody will use is "charming." Something just happened. It's automatic, just operating a camera intelligently.
[Photography is ] likewise even French impressionists. So the Sculls bought pop. It was politics, and they moved with it. And I think that could be happening, to some degree, with photography, too. It doesn't cost as much to do it, either.
Every photograph could be set up. If one could imagine it, one could set it up. The whole discussion is a way of not talking about photographs.
There are people who are socially ambitious. If you go back aways, the Sculls, for instance, had a lot of money and they were socially ambitious. If you get an old master, it's not going to do you any good socially.
There are photographers whose shows I try to make it my business to see, if I'm in the city. There are photographers I have no interest in at all.
