Photographer

I was a very clumsy Jewish kid.

I think that Damien Hirst putting a shark in a bath of formaldehyde is nothing.

My father was convinced that America was the greatest place in the world. I'm afraid I didn't have the family I would have dreamed of.

In America, kids would go to college and get out and buy a second-hand car and go across the country and discover America. I never did that; I went from New York to Paris, and New York was my America.

I was 24 years old at the time. I had no real notion of what photography was about. I had no training. By accident, I put a negative in an enlarger, and you can do many things with that negative.

If I look back, I think most of the things I did - the films, the books, the collaborations with these magazines - were mostly by accident.

In fashion, you have assistants, flashes; you can make sets. There are people running around doing things for you. But I can take it or leave it.

My way of living and working is that I'll do my thing. I went from one thing to another. That annoyed people. They didn't know how to categorize me.

Don't have rules, taboos, or limits.

I like dark humor. I think the world is very funny and tragic, and my photographs are basically dark Jewish humor.

I'm known for fashion photographs, but fashion photographs were mostly a joke for me. In 'Vogue,' girls were playing at being duchesses, but they were actually from Flatbush, Brooklyn. They would play duchesses, and I would play Cecil Beaton.

I grew up in New York, in a rough neighborhood where our biggest concern was not getting beat up. I was always far from the center of the Big Apple.

I like film. I'm old fashioned.

I find it satisfying that what I've done in photography has had so much influence in how people take photographs and what they look at and how they look at things.

Why did I take fashion photographs? I thought it was fun. And there was a lot of money.

Most of the other soldiers were older than me and sent money back to their families, so they were more prudent.

In the late Fifties and early Sixties, I used to think that most of these fashion creators weren't that great, and if the photograph was good, it was mostly thanks to the photographer.

The kinetic quality of New York, the kids, dirt, madness - I tried to find a photographic style that would come close to it. So I cropped, blurred, played with the negatives.

If a film is a real knockout like 'Raging Bull,' it does not matter that it might not have happened like that.

This is supposed to be the Big Apple, with neighborhoods where the houses are all good-looking and the skyscrapers and everything. But to me, New York is kind of shoddy and uncomfortable.