I'd read about Los Angeles and this fact stuck in my mind: that the city gained 1,000 new people every day. In 1956! A thousand people every day! I felt: 'I want to be part of that.'

I travel a lot, but I don’t come away with new inspiration.

People refuse to believe that I’ve never been to Starbucks or Disneyland.

I’m very stodgy. I’m always looking at old photos of California and Los Angeles, knowing that what I’m looking at is now full of houses. There used to be vacant lots in Los Angeles, now all taken up by three-storey boxes – it’s all getting infilled.

I have no social agenda with my work. I’m deadpan about it.

I knew I wanted to be some kind of artist from about 12. I met a neighbour who drew cartoons, and I had an idea I wanted to be a cartoonist – or something that involved Indian ink, at any rate.

Most artists are doing basically the same thing – staying off the streets.

All my artistic response comes from American things, and I guess I’ve always had a weakness for heroic imagery.

When I first did the book on gasoline stations, people would look at it and say, Are you kidding or what? Why are you doing this? In a sense, that’s what I was after: I was after the head-scratching.

Yes, there’s a certain power to a photograph. The camera has a way of disorienting a person, if it wants to and, for me, when it disorients, it’s got real value.