I think of myself as a kind of reporter I report on the nature of certain events. I think of art as a report on civilization at a certain time.

I am trying to make some kind of connection to what is going on in the world, to make some sort of contact. And I use the instruments that our modern world offers, these extraordinary instruments of photography and film and computers.

People say: But photographs are all lies. That's not the point. The lie is a truth, too. How the hell are we going to know what Kissinger looks like? Well, the photograph tells us one version I'm trying to tell it also, but differently.

The freeze of a photographic gesture, the fix of an action, how an arm twists, how a smile gets momentarily stabilized or exaggerated - to try to get some of this is important... The photofix inflects the almost literal shaping of a figure, changes of movement or potential movement, and a sense of occurrence or event.

Over the years a photo-mania developed. At times, photographic images have signaled a way forward and gotten me out of a bind.

Monsters exist because we create them, through war and violence, and distortion, and the way we handle people and so on.