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As a viewer, my own work elicits strong emotional reaction from me.

I'm manipulating the audience. I'm making sure people sympathize.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.

When I'm photographing, I think - like any rescue worker who deals with tragedy - you have to have some protective barrier around your heart so you can do your job. You tend to have a delayed reaction to things. I feel things more deeply after I put the camera down.

I'm more offended when someone's killed on television than when there's something that's sensuous or sexual. So what?

I just want real reactions. I want people to laugh from the gut, be sad from the gut - or get angry from the gut.

I don't like the idea the viewer can kind of sit there and go, 'Make me like this person.' People aren't inherently sympathetic.

I'm much more about the emotion that a photograph provokes out of you and less about how technically brilliant it is.

You get annoyed about things in real life, and then the tragic thing is that while you are moaning on the awful injustice and suffering of something, something grimly comic will then strike you about it, like a parasite feeding off the misery of the world.

On many issues, empathy can pull us in the wrong direction. The outrage that comes from adopting the perspective of a victim can drive an appetite for retribution.