The challenge for me has first been to see
things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing
ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective. What I mean by
objectivity is not the objectivity of a machine, but of a sensible human
being with the mystery of personal selection at the heart of it. The
second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to
supply the visual context and the intellectual framework - that to me is
the art of photography.
And that desire--the strong desire to take
pictures--is important. It borders on a need, based on a habit: the
habit of seeing. Whether working or not, photographers are looking,
seeing, and thinking about what they see, a habit that is both a
pleasure and a problem, for we seldom capture in a single photograph the
full expression of what we see and feel. It is the hope that we might
express ourselves fully--and the evidence that other photographers have
done so--that keep us taking pictures.
