I always wanted to be a photographer. I was fascinated with the materials, but I never dreamed I would be having this much fun. I imagined something much less elusive, much more mundane.

... a mysterious intersection of chance and attention that goes well beyond the existential surrealism of the 'decisive moment'.

With a camera like that you don't believe you're in the masterpiece business. It's enough to be able to peck at the world.

I take more to the subject than to my ideas about it. I am not interested in any idea I have had, the subject is so demanding and so important.

It fascinates me that there is a variety of feeling about what I do. I'm not a premeditative photographer. I see a picture and I make it. If I had a chance, I'd be out shooting all the time. You don't have to go looking for pictures. The material is generous. You go out and the pictures are staring at you.

At first, my presence in my photos was fascinating and disturbing. But as time passed and I was more a part of other ideas in my photos, I was able to add a giggle to those feelings.

The world makes up my pictures, not me.

I only wanted Uncle Vernon standing by his own car (a Hudson) on a clear day, I got him and the car. Ialso got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on the fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.

You don’t have to go looking for pictures. The material is generous. You go out and the pictures are staring at YOU.

I suspect it is for one's self-interest that one looks at one's surroundings and one's self. This search is personally born and is indeed my reason and motive for making photographs.

Photographs also show the way that the camera sees. It's not just me or you or anybody else. The camera does something that is different from our own setting.

... photographs are so loaded with information. They're remarkable. As I said, you get both the tree and the forest.

The West to me is where the landscape is.

The camera is not merely a reflecting pool and the photographs are not exactly the mirror, mirror on the wall that speaks with a twisted tongue.