When they released Sidewalks of New York, there were some shots with the towers they were going to take out, and Ed told them no. I don't think they can deny the towers were a part of New York.
It was interesting to shoot history as it happens, without anyone demanding a huge story.
I think photography is being recognized and collected. Its values have certainly gone up and continue to go up.
I write in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done.
This 'historical record' will exist, flawed as it is, in hundreds of years. What will that tell the future? How accurate are we reporting our lives?
In 1979, I moved to England and photographed Joy Division and Bowie and Beefheart. At that time I got images that I felt had that special, well - power is a big word to say - more like intimacy and ambition that outlasted the photo shoot. I felt that they would have a longer life.
I think there are two types of photographers, those who want to document the world and those who want to create their own world. I am more interested in documenting the world and presenting it to people with the question attached, 'Does this make any sense to you?'
I'm following a real event and real people.
In the end, we journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: 'we didn't know - no one told us.'
Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.
I'm not an activist. I'm a filmmaker. I'm a dramatist. My strength is to tell a story, to find a way to tell a story that makes it exciting. Our Untold History was a huge challenge. Snowden was no piece of cake, because writing code and breaking code is some of the most boring stuff you've ever seen.
To photograph is to confer importance.
I want to photograph the considerable ceremonies of our present. I want to gather them, like somebody's grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful.
I don't mind my work being a record of the time it was written in.
All pictures are unnatural. All pictures are sad because they're about dead people. Paintings you don't think of in a special time or with a specific event. With photos I always think I'm looking at something dead.
Old reference books are like tree rings. Without them, there'd be no way to know what a tree had lived through.
The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.
Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.
The people who make history are not the people who make it who are there but the people who make it and then write about it.
Sometimes when I am photographing a major news event, I am suddenly overwhelmed by helplessness.
One advantage of photography is that it's visual and can transcend language.
Other people are talking about writing books about my life, or about some of the things I've done. I find it strange, but I also feel it's my life and my story, and I guess I better be the one to get it on paper the way it actually happened.
Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.
I have always had a long term view on records as I want them to be books and not magazines and newspapers that you discard very quickly.
It's a huge responsibility writing about people who are alive. It's the thing about writing that keeps me awake at night: dramatising real-life events with real people.
