My Best Work Is Often Almost Unconscious

I Can't Speak For Other Photographers, But The Photographers Who Went Forward Strongly When The So-called "official" Part Of Their Career Ended, To Me, Were Those Who Had Taught. Teaching Enriches And Enlivens One's Work.

There Are A Lot Of Ways To Talk About The Life Of A Photograph. You Can Talk About The Afterlife Of A Photograph, And In The End I Talk About That, With The Richard Prince Picture. But Mainly, What I Dedicated The Book To Being About Was How Photographs Begin Their Life, And Where They Begin It. And They Begin It With The Photographer's Imagination And Instinct And Experience.

Though Geographic Didn't Publish That Photo In The Story That It Was Done For, "the Life Of Charlie Russell," A Cowboy Artist In Montana. But Later, Maybe A Year And A Half Ago, They Named It One Of The 50 Greatest Pictures Ever Made At National Geographic.

In Almost Every Photograph I Have Ever Made, There Is Something I Would Do To Complete It. I Take That To Be The Spirit Hole Or The Deliberate Mistake That's In A Navajo Rug To Not Be Godlike, But To Be Human.

My Father Taught Me Photography. It Was His Hobby, And We Had A Small Darkroom In The Fruit Cellar Of Our Basement. It Was The Kind Of Makeshift Darkroom That Was Only Dark At Night.