For me, the stars are the invisible people on the street that people don't really get a chance to know.
What I strive to do through my work, is to teach compassion. You need to have a lot of it, in this day and time, and it's lacking.
My camera is my compass; it's guided me to so many different places.
When you look at my photos, just look into the eyes of my subjects. The eyes say so much.
I remember growing up and hearing the word "ugly" a lot. "I'm ugly." "She ugly." "He ugly." I hated it then, and I hate it now. I go past physical beauty; I tell people they have a beautiful spirit and that is something different.
The photograph is to a great degree evidence of the conversation I had with the person. It's a part of my visual diary.
Photography is humbling, it really is, and it really allows for me to atone for some of the missteps I've made throughout the course of my life.
There is just something about the common being. My education pretty much came from the streets, just connecting with people, different cultures. I gained the wealth just engaging at that level. I'm still like that. I continue to document everyday people versus the stars.
I place myself in situations where a lot of people are going to be, and bring a particular body of work that reflects the people already there. You have to study your subject.
Sometimes we are just divided, but we still, for the most part, we have similar hopes and dreams.
When a photographer or a person sees your beauty, your inner beauty, it makes you feel special like, "Wow, someone saw that within me."
I think that photography has allowed me to have a voice. I used to stutter, and once I overcame that struggle, it felt good to tell people they were beautiful and special.
The images of war inspired me to create, to go to different situations and communities, to document the human side of people, to show a side that we don't see.
When I approach a person, I feel a certain way. If I don't feel that way, I'm not going to approach that individual. "I see something in you" - I want the person to know that.
The majority of the people I've taken photographs of, I've had conversations with. "What are your goals and aspirations?" "What are you about?" It's not just about me capturing the image; I want to know what you are about.
I read a recent statistic that eighty-seven percent of women are dissatisfied with themselves, and over forty-seven percent of men. My work is visu-medicine to heal people and see beauty within people.
There was a time in my life that I may not have been that nice, and now I'm in a position to contribute to the education of young people, and teach them to be compassionate, be more loving, more caring, to not use profanity, to not pollute the environment - these are things that I address in my photography. I
I think what it was with the war photography was the concerned eye, the desire to document these situations to show the world the horrors of war. It inspired me to document prostitution; inspired me to document homelessness in America. We are the richest country in the world, yet we have people suffering, so it helped me to look at things in that manner.
I think that's what the war photography did for me. It showed me the human side of people and how certain circumstances can change people's lives.
I do believe in angels and I believe that a lot of these people I'm supposed to meet. The photograph serves as evidence; it causes me to reflect on when I met this person.
I'm shooting a gangbanger, but as a dignified man. That's pretty much what war photography did: seeing images of soldiers in a dignified way. They might have been killers in Vietnam, but I'm seeing another side of them, and looking at images of the the American soldiers, also the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong - I never saw an enemy.
For the most part, as a society, we are not happy with ourselves.
Philip Jones Griffith documented the Vietnam War, and through his images that were published in Time Life Magazine, it showed me the horrors of war and at that time, I wanted to be a war photographer, based off his work.
I wanted to go amongst gangbangers, to understand this war they were fighting amongst each other. I wanted to document it, [also] to show the human side of it.
