I have to be reminded, “’It’s your son’s birthday party. Bring a camera.’ And then, when I’m there, ‘Take a picture,’ because it doesn’t occur to me to use it as this memorializing thing.
I'm not interested in doing the same kind of picture over and over again. I pose problems for myself. Sometimes they are aesthetic problems and sometimes they are logistical problems.
If I only try to solve the problems I set for myself, then I'm limited by what I can conceive of. I can't solve a problem I can't conceive. But if someone else gives me a visual problem, it can be out of the whole realm of my normal practice.
I don't know how much a photograph can add to a biography, the way a film or writing or narrative medium could. Because it's a frozen image.
I realize that as I get more experience as I get older, my perception changes and that feeds the photograph.
I've been the head of the photography program at Bard College for over 30 years, and I take that as seriously as I do my photography. My time is devoted to that too.
A quote that I like very much comes close to explaining my attitude about taking photographs. ‘Chinese poetry rarely trespasses beyond the bounds of actuality the great Chinese poets accept the world exactly as they find it in all its terms and with profound simplicity they seldom talk about one thing in terms of another; but are able enough and sure enough as artists to make the ultimately exact terms become the beautiful terms.’
Even in ordinary reproduction [photography] verges on facsimile.
I had a creative hot streak in the 1940s and since then I’ve been pot boiling.
Back in the 70s it cost 15-20$ a shot for the film, the processing, and the contact sheet, now it’s twice that.
