It's often about the simple things, isn't it? Painting and photography are first about seeing, they say. Writing is about observing. Technique is secondary. Sometimes the simple is the most difficult.
War is the easiest photography in the business. Just get close, be lucky, know how your camera works. There are subjects everywhere. Everyplace you go, there is something to photograph in a war, like being in the middle of a hurricane or a train cras...
Philip Greenspun had a huge impact on me. He was the first person I knew of that embraced online communities, created a real business around open source, gave back to the community through education, and inspired me to explore photography.
For me, documentary photography has always come with great responsibility. Not just to tell the story honestly and with empathy, but also to make sure the right people hear it. When you photograph somebody who is in pain or discomfort, they trust you...
Everything I do, it's a bit painterly. I like being surrounded by objects, mostly on paper. I like the images. I like the painting. I like good photography. It's something that makes me an emotional connection, and I feel comfortable around it.
I'm always worried about the sitter - are they cold, are they hot, are they comfortable? Photography today is so accurate and so good that it's really so much easier just to take photographs and work from them.
As in any person's life, there have been difficult moments: I have a son with Down's syndrome; through my photography, I have witnessed all manner of human degradation. But there have also been very happy moments.
The problem for me is that I've never actually studied photography, so it's quite a steep learning curve. Cameras these days do so much for you automatically but I still think there's a point where you should actually know the technical side.
In terms of digital photography, I continue to print and use film for the most part. I still shoot with film, 21/4 film specifically, and I love it. I love it because I know what it does, how it really responds to light.
What I love about photography, and it's the same thing I love about acting, really, is that it forces you, like, right into the moment, where you can't be distracted, where you can't be, like, thinking about other things or ahead of yourself or behin...
The thing with computer-generated imagery is that it's an incredibly powerful tool for making better visual effects. But I believe in an absolute difference between animation and photography.
I have a theory that most people disagree with. I really feel that acting for film and acting for the stage are two different crafts. I think that they share things in common. But I liken it to a painter switching over to photography.
A photograph of a woman crying tells me nothing about grief. Or a photograph of a woman ecstatic tells me nothing about ecstasy. What is the nature of these emotions? The problem with photography is that it only deals with appearances.
I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.
Photography is the easiest medium with which to be merely competent. Almost anybody can be competent. It's the hardest medium in which to have some sort of personal vision and to have a signature style.
For 'Star Wars' I had to develop a whole new idea about special effects to give it the kind of kinetic energy I was looking for. I did it with motion-control photography.
Ever since the 1860s when photographers travelled the American West and brought photographs of scenic wonders back to the people on the East Coast of America we have had a North American tradition of landscape photography used for the environment.
People of my generation who became photographers in the late fifties, early sixties, there were no rewards in photography. There were no museum shows. Maybe MOMA would show something, or Chicago. There were no galleries. Nobody bought photographs.
I had done a lot of rock 'n' roll photography when I was in college. I was one of many photographers who worked for The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and all of these rock 'n' roll bands.
But slowly I began to use cameras and then think about what it was that was going on. It took me a long time, I mean I actually played with cameras and photography for about 20 years.
I'm not satirical in a traditional way. What I do is more about creating caricatures and cartoons. I am commentating on the nature of how we live through photography, and how you can twist an angle to create a different perception of a person.
