If I Could Do What I Want

My Photographs Don't Go Below The Surface. They Don't Go Below Anything. They're Readings Of The Surface. I Have Great Faith In Surfaces. A Good One Is Full Of Clues. But Whenever I Become Absorbed In The Beauty Of A Face, In The Excellence Of A Single Feature, I Feel I've Lost What's Really There Been Seduced By Someone Else's Standard Of Beauty Or By The Sitter's Own Idea Of The Best In Him. That's Not Usually The Best. So Each Sitting Becomes A Contest.

I Hate Cameras. They Interfere, They're Always In The Way. I Wish: If I Could Work With My Eyes Alone.

How Many Pictures Have You Torn Up Because You Hate Them? What Ends Up In Your Scrapbook? The Pictures Where You Look Like A Good Guy And A Good Family Man, And The Children Look Adorable - And They're Screaming The Next Minute. I've Never Seen A Family Album Of Screaming People.

Camera Lies All The Time. It’s All It Does Is Lie, Because When You Choose This Moment Instead Of This Moment, When You… The Moment You’ve Made A Choice, You’re Lying About Something Larger. Lying Is An Ugly Word. I Don’t Mean Lying. But Any Artist Picks And Chooses What They Want To Paint Or Write About Or Say. Photographers Are The Same.

A Photographic Portrait Is A Picture Of Someone Who Knows He's Being Photographed, And What He Does With This Knowledge Is As Much A Part Of The Photograph As What He's Wearing Or How He Looks. He's Implicated In What's Happening, And He Has A Certain Real Power Over The Result.