If Each Photograph Steals A Bit Of

I Never Wanted To Be Called An Artist. I Wanted To Be Called A Photographer.

When I Was A Boy, My Family Took Great Care With Our Snapshots. We Really Planned Them. We Made Compositions. We Posed In Front Of Expensive Cars, Homes, That Werent Ours. We Borrowed Dogs. Almost Every Family Picture Taken Of Us When I Was Young Had A Different Borrowed Dog In It.

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.

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.

When You Pose For A Photograph, It's Behind A Smile That Isn't Yours. You Are Angry And Hungry And Alive. What I Value In You Is That Intensity. I Want To Make Portraits As Intense As People.