Quotes About Authenticity

Some people will stop a scene and demand a mirror and look at themselves and check which angles they're being photographed from. I don't do that.

I don't like gimmicky pictures; I've always hated them. I like pictures that are very clear and clean, whether you're a great street photographer - somebody like Friedlander or Winogrand or Cartier-Bresson - or whether you're a portraitist, like Irving Penn.

I'm a documentary photographer. That's what I've always wanted to be; that's where my heart and soul is.

I'm very lucky that I'm not a photographer for hire - people hire me for me. I go into every commercial work with an art focus, with that lens; every brand I've worked for just lets me do whatever I want to do. I have full creative freedom.

People often say, 'You don't go to fashion shows? What kind of photographer are you? What the hell is the wrong with you, man?' But that's what I need in order to be who I am.

Not long ago, every time I did a picture shoot for a magazine, the photographer would ask me to show up wearing jeans and cowboy boots. They seemed to think I was a hillbilly. Now it's different. Now they're not quite sure what to make of me. And I show up wearing whatever I want.

I have always said that it is completely about the music, and I have never been interested in anything else. I think I've been able to maintain that. I'm a totally normal person, I don't get followed or have photographers waiting outside my door. So yes I have a very ordinary life.

A lot of photographers like models to be blank canvases - but bland girls don't influence me. I don't like playing with dolls; I like playing with people.

If I go out with no make-up and a tracksuit on, nobody comes up to me. And if they do, I won't do a photo because I wouldn't want any photographic evidence.

Things have to be believable, not in a literal, photographic sense, but in an emotional sense - capturing the essence of the situation.

Photographers must learn not to be ashamed to have their photographs look like photographs.

While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.

I look back at old photographs and videotapes, and I go, Who was I trying to be? Who was I doing this for?

I say no to photographs. When people take my picture, I feel like they've taken a piece of me, and I can't get that back. It's soul-draining.

I happen to take photographs, and they happen to be used for a lot of things, but they're not really made to order. They're paid for, but they're not made for order. I've never really done real commercial work.

You just feel like you're doing a job that you want to be doing, and then one day, somebody asks you a question like that: 'What's it like to be famous?' It doesn't really mean anything. The only difference is some people stop you and ask you for photographs.

For me, I've got no interest in being a celebrity, and I have no interest in doing photographs, going to this party or that.

The idea of beauty today is a bloody mess. It's really awful. You look in the fashion magazines and see all of these retouched people. Some guys called retouchers go on the computer and take away everything that you are and then call it photography. I think it's such an insult.

Photography has always been capable of manipulation.

We made 'Mickey and the Bear' with barely any money with a first-time director, a first-time director of photography, and a crew who had just graduated from NYU film school. We were all very much in this together for the first time. There's no famous actor or big explosions. It's not a Marvel movie. I thought nobody was going to see this film.

People see my photos and think I labor over my image and I'm this cool, brooding artist. But I'm just having fun with it.

Unfiltered photos always get more attention. Filters are easy to discern.

People know what I look like. I take photos on my own, and I don't edit them, so people know.

With the indiscriminate touching-up of photos, we've grown accustomed to seeing personalities drained of all their humanity, yet we consider them as real.