To Be An Artist, You Have To

For Hours She Danced And Sang And Flirted And Did This Thing That's-she Did Marilyn Monroe. And Then There Was The Inevitable Drop. And When The Night Was Over And The White Wine Was Over And The Dancing Was Over, She Sat In The Corner Like A Child, With Everything Gone. I Saw Her Sitting Quietly Without Expression On Her Face, And I Walked Towards Her But I Wouldn't Photograph Her Without Her Knowledge Of It. And As I Came With The Camera, I Saw That She Was Not Saying No.

I Hate Cameras. They Interfere, They’re Always In The Way. I Wish: If I Could Just Work With My Eyes Alone. To Get A Satisfactory Print, One That Contains All That You Intended, Is Very Often More Difficult And Dangerous Than The Sitting Itself. When I’m Photographing, I Immediately Know When I’ve Got The Image I Really Want. But To Get The Image Out Of The Camera And Into The Open, Is Another Matter.

Sometimes I Think All My Pictures Are Just Pictures Of Me. My Concern Is...the Human Predicament; Only What I Consider The Human Predicament May Simply Be My Own.

I Always Prefer To Work In The Studio. It Isolates People From Their Environment. They Become In A Sense... Symbolic Of Themselves. I Often Feel That People Come To Me To Be Photographed As They Would Go To A Doctor Or A Fortune Teller - To Find Out How They Are.

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.