A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph.
When I read something, I picture that scene in that detail. That becomes very similar to composing a photo in real life.
I really admire paintings that look like an actual snapshot - I think that's just extraordinary.
People have asked me a lot, 'What comes first? The pictures or the story? The story or the picture?' It's hard to describe because often they seem to come at the same time. I'm seeing images while I'm thinking of the story.
The content of Saul Leiter's photographs arrives on a sort of delay: it takes a moment after the first glance to know what the picture is about. You don't so much see the image as let it dissolve into your consciousness, like a tablet in a glass of water.
I think all the stuff that happens before the pictures are taken is much more exciting.
I think a few pictures at a time.
I think that's the strength of photography - to decide the decisive moment, to click in the moment to come up with a picture that never comes back again.
What intrigues me is making images that confound and confuse the viewer but that the viewer knows, or suspects, really happened.
I am impressed with what happens when someone stays in the same place and you took the same picture over and over and it would be different, every single frame.