My First Priority When Taking Pictures Is

I Have This Awareness That The More Dynamic The Situation Is, The More On Guard I Need To Be That The Dynamic Isn't Controlling The Situation. I Found That Myself In The Galapagos. For The First Time In My Life I Was Around Very Exotic Animals, Colorful, Beautiful, And Immediately Present, All Around. Birds, Turtles, Iguanas, Seals. I Was Being Seduced By Their Exoticism, I Was Taking Pictures.the Pictures Weren't Well Lit, There Was No Moment In Play, There Was No Depth To The Pictures. I Was Just Gawking With My Camera At Something I'd Never Seen Before.

...just Like Some People's Instinct To Photograph Is Triggered By Vacation... Assignments Might Be That To Me And That's Why I've Built My Life Around Assignments. That Was The Way To Live The Photographic Life.

First Of All, I Appropriate Photographs.in Presenting The Richard Prince Photograph I Tried To Be As Neutral As I Could Be. I Put Down The Fact Of It. I Wanted It To Be The Same Thing He Wanted It To Be, An Open Ended Invitation To Think About Authorship, And Who Owns A Created Work. So I Pair It With My Appropriated Picture.

[ My Time And Our Common Culture] It's What I'm Photographing, And I'm Very Involved With That.

I Think Of Myself As A Writer Who Photographs. Images, For Me, Can Be Considered Poems, Short Stories Or Essays. And I've Always Thought The Best Place For My Photographs Was Inside Books Of My Own Creation.