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There are some times when you make films and you travel places, and the take that people in the business have is that the worst way to see a city is to shoot there, because you work these long 12, 13 and 14-hour days, and you go home to the hotel, you eat, and you pass out.

I struck upon this kind of crazy idea that I was going to go to New York and stop 10,000 people on the streets and take their portrait and create kind of a photographic census of the city.

I wanted to experience New York, to look up and see buildings.

I suddenly had to chase after my pictures... Pictures are like taxis during rush hour - if you're not fast enough, someone else will get there first.

And I also take photos of hydrogen bomb, from another part of the building. It was not part of my job, but I succeeded to go and take photos of the hydrogen bomb.

I don't think I'm ever going to get to the point where people run across a freeway to take a picture of me. I really don't see it getting to that level of hysteria unless I have an affair with the Queen of Sweden or something like that.

I've been chased through airports with a screaming baby because the photographers are ruthless, and they want the picture.

Everything that I have professionally, and so much of what I have personally, is because of this great, fair city, and to see it being drowned like this is almost unbearable.

You can't have the finest buildings if they're not in focus. They become like nice cars parked on the street.

I was primarily interested in people, and people in action, so that I did nothing photographically in the sense of doing buildings for their own sake or a still life or anything like that.