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 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.

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

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 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 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.

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