I was a make believe ethnographer: treating New Yorkers like an explorer would treat Zulus - searching for the rawest snapshot, the zero degree of photography.

I thought New York had it coming, that it needed a kick in the balls. When I returned to New York, I wanted to get even. Now I had a weapon, photography.

I came from the outside, the rules of photography didn't interest me.

What would please me most is to make photographs as incomprehensible as life.

Anybody who pretends to be objective isn't realistic.

Sometimes, I'd take shots without aiming, just to see what happened. I'd rush into crowds - bang! bang! ... It must be close to what a fighter feels after jabbing and circling and getting hit, when suddenly there's an opening, and bang! Right on the button. It's a fantastic feeling.

I have a special relationship with God. And when I take the right photograph, God gives me a little bing! in the camera. And then I know I'm on the right track.

Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn't look like somebody else's work.

I have always done the opposite of what I was trained to do... Having little technical background, I became a photographer. Adopting a machine, I do my utmost to make it malfunction. For me, to make a photograph is to make an anti-photograph.

I have always loved the amateur side of photography, automatic photographs, accidental photographs with uncentered compositions, heads cut off, whatever. I incite people to make their self-portraits. I see myself as their walking photo booth.