Quote

Photography is very presumptuous. Photographers are always photographing other people's lives - something they know nothing about - and drawing great inferences into it.

I began making pictures because I wanted to record what supports hope: the untranslatable mystery and beauty of the world. Along the way, however, the camera also caught evidence against hope, and I eventually concluded that this, too, belonged in pictures if they were to be truthful and thus useful.

I got my first camera when I was 21 - my boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday - but at that point politics was my life, and I viewed the camera as a tool for expressing my political beliefs rather than as an art medium.

For the camera, particularly, I feel like - I think that, as human faces become older, they become more interesting.

I have mixed feelings about those sorts of things. When I see it done by interesting young people, I think it's very valid. But when established photographers, people in their forties, copy me and get a lot of money, well, I find that to be very stupid.

When you are younger, the camera is like a friend and you can go places and feel like you're with someone, like you have a companion.

Imagine there wasn't photography. Where would we be? How would I remember what I looked like as a kid? It links us all. It keeps us all together; it's what our history is.

I grew up as a photo nut. Every Christmas I would get a new camera. It's a huge part of my life.

A lot of mainstream photographers seem not to think about what they're doing or feel any responsibility toward anything. By the time they're done, the models don't have any trace of themselves left. This thing about looking young with no wrinkles or expression is all so boring, really.

With photography, I always think that it's not good enough.