When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.
In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view and to be conceptual with a picture. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.
I went to Yosemite as an homage to Ansel Adams. I could never be Ansel Adams, but to know that's there for us - there's so much for us in this country.
When you go to take someone's picture, the first thing they say is, what you want me to do? Everyone is very awkward.
I've created a vocabulary of different styles. I draw from many different ways to take a picture. Sometimes I go back to reportage, to journalism.
What I am interested in now is the landscape. Pictures without people. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there are no people in my pictures. It is so emotional.
Lennon was very helpful. What he taught me seems completely obvious: he expected people to treat each other well.
When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't.
Video just accesses international information so much more readily.
For me, the world is a stage, and we are all playing the character we have chosen to play on that stage. It is the job of the photographer to capture the drama of the performance.
I'm always followed by two or three cars and have police around. Even walking in the park, you see them taking photos behind the bushes and trying to videotape everything.
To protect the right of expression is the central part of an artist's activity... In China many essential rights are lacking, and I wanted to remind people of this.
If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.
The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective.
We loved Andy, so we wanted to keep him. He was in both bands, but Nerve Agents broke up.
I consider it essential that the photographer should do his own printing and enlarging. The final effect of the finished print depends so much on these operations.
When I was 16... I worked in a pet store. And they fired me because... they had three snakes in there, and one day I braided them.
Work hard. And have patience. Because no matter who you are, you're going to get hurt in your career and you have to be patient to get through the injuries.
So there was a fire inside me. And that fire inside you, it can be turned into a negative form or a positive form. And I gradually realised that I had this fire and that it had to be used in a positive way.
..it has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don’t know the artistic side of a painting.
Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.
