Themes recur again and again in my work.

I had in mind a long career.

What do you hang on the walls of your mind?

What I have tried to do is involve the people I was photographing… if they were willing to give, I was willing to photograph.

I realize that I had the best of serious picture journalism.

It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

I find going back through things sometimes exhilarating because I find things I didn’t know I had, and sometimes it’s very off putting because there are things I never quite finished, and there’s nothing at...

I love the idea I can go off with a single camera and a few rolls of film unencumbered… I was not interested in the illusion of reality, I wanted to get close to what...

If you are careful with people, they will offer you part of themselves. That is the big secret.

I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our...

It’s hard for me to assess what I brought because each time you pick up a camera and point it at a person, you’re trying to define that person so to talk generally is difficult...

If the chemistry is right between star and photographer and the geometry of the pictures pleases the star, often the two people end up with a long-term professional friendship during which they continue to work...

I realise that I had the best of serious picture journalism. There was an innocence in our approach, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when we naively believed that by holding a mirror up to...

What has changed is that when I photographed, most people that I photographed didn’t have the right of refusal on their work. It would take a Marilyn Monroe at her height to be able to...

I don’t see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens.

What you need to be a good photographer is an overwhelming curiosity and a good digestion. Sometimes you feel blessed with curiosity, sometimes you feel cursed with it.

You should never reveal your true age.

I came to photography by accident.

What drove me and kept me going over the decades? If I had to use a single word, it would be ‘curiosity.’

I can’t hold a camera anymore.

I want the subject to be in control. Because they will give me something I couldn’t possibly know about them.

It doesn’t matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.

If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given.

Lesson number one: Pay attention to the intrusion of the camera.

Recording sessions were stimulating to photograph, because everything was in motion: the subject, the musicians, the technicians and the photographer. You needed fast reflexes to keep up with moving targets, and sensitivity and skill to...

I look for a sense of reality with everything I did. I didn’t work in a studio, I didn’t light anything. I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn’t have to...