Photography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old man’s face, or an Arbus freak, or the way light hits a building – and then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. It’s the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing.

One of the marvelous things about film is that if you expose it long enough you’re going to get a picture.

I’m very hard on the art world just being a big business.

Taking the photograph is the easiest part for me.

I write in order to express what the photo itself cannot say. A photograph of my father doesn’t tell me what I thought of him, which for me is much more important than what the man looked like.

Photography is very presumptuous. Photographers are always photographing other people’s lives – something they know nothing about – and drawing great inferences into it.

I already know what things look like – I don’t want description. People believe in appearances, and I don’t believe in appearances at all.

Art is not fashionable. That’s why fashion and art are two different things. Fashion can never be art because fashion deals with whim, what is temporary, what changes, what is transient, what is now and not now. Art has to deal with issues that are timeless, that never change.

I think photographers are too polite. There is not enough anger in photography; it’s pretty much trivialized.

I never photograph sunsets and I never photograph moonrises. I’m not interested in what things look like.