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" Photography led me to experiment in graphic work and, actually, painting. "

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

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

" When I was a kid in New York, long before saturation sports coverage, the world heavyweight championship was, with the baseball World Series, the great national event. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" My sister was brilliant: she was in the 25 top math students in the country. When she finished college, I said, 'Spend a couple of months here in Europe. You'll get another take on life.' She never came - married some schmuck who made clothes for fat women on Seventh Avenue. "

" When I made 'Polly Maggoo,' it was more or less the end of this collaboration with 'Vogue' because I made a caricature of the editor-in-chief and the fashion people, so they didn't really adore me. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" My father was like Willy Loman, you know: he never really made it - and he was from a family where there were people who had made it. "

" Being an expatriate doesn't go down well in America. "

" 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. "

" I always thought I was going to be an artist. I used to draw, and I would read Russian novels until 3 or 4 in the morning. "

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

" 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. "

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

" I had an experience that was kind of backward. Instead of thinking that photography was a step down, it brought me a step up, to transpose and modify things. "

" 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. "

" When you use film, you use accidents, but there aren't any accidents with digital photography. I don't mind that it's easy. But I do mind that there is a sort of consensus with the camera and the subject and the light, and you look at something, and you photograph it, and you get what you see. "

" The English are very exotic to me. "

" I wasn't part of any movement. I was working alone, following my instinct. "

" 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. "

" I did a film on Muhammad Ali before he was champion. I was there when he became champion in 1964. I was happy to be able to document the development of a real American hero. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Don't have rules, taboos, or limits. "

" 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. "