Photographer

The digital camera takes photographs in practically no light: it will dig out the least bit of light available. I was amazed to see the results of photographs that I wouldn't take ordinarily. That's the advantage of digital photography.

The best critics of America are Americans.

I like the streets. I grew up in the streets.

I always dreamed of working in Paris, of going to the Coupole and slapping Picasso or Giacometti on the shoulder.

People didn't object to me taking their photo. It was something everybody thought was their due: to be King for a Day, win the lottery and be photographed.

I think it's obscene. I don't know how you support the monarchy. How can you do that?

I discovered that I could do whatever I wanted with a negative in a darkroom and an enlarger.

French photography was basically poetic, and mine was vulgar and brash and violent, except that there's never any violence in the photographs: it's only in the photographic style.

I like festivals of all kinds: in 1969, I made a film about the first Pan-African festival in Algiers, which celebrated the countries that had been liberated 10 years earlier. There was a tremendous feeling of kinship.

I thought it would be good not to hide the fact that you're taking a photograph, and have people react and come in close and also make a commentary on what's being photographed: 'This is a photo, this is my point of view.'

For my first book, 'New York,' I had one camera and two lenses. It was fotografia povera.

Fashion was more of a sideline for me. I did it for the money.

I saw New York differently after being in Paris for a few years.

I grew up in Manhattan. For Manhattanites, Brooklyn was the sticks, a second-rate civilization. My friends and I, we were so snobby. Living in the Bronx or Brooklyn was incredible... for me, that was like a foreign country.

The English are very exotic to me.

Fashion had no interest for me. I would take photographs in the studio. I would go back home, and my wife would say, 'What is the fashion like for this season?' And I would say, 'I have no idea.'

I had no real respect for good technique because I didn't know what it was. I was self-taught, so that stuff didn't matter to me.

I thought it would be a good idea to look at New York with this half-European, half-native eye and really do something to get back at this city that I thought really gave me a hard time when I grew up.

My complaint is that Americans drive me crazy, and the politics drive me crazy.

What's very funny is when you see amateurs filming something, they do some things no professionals would dare to do. They instinctively do things that are very avant-garde and useful.