"Many photographers feel their client is the subject. My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I'm trying to intrigue, stimulate, feed her. My responsibility is to the reader. The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader."
"The modern photographer is not at all a snob, he brings equal interest and devotion to the problem of photographing a queen, a chair, a fashion model, a solider, a horse, he finds something of himself in everything and something of everything in himself."
"I don't have two lives. This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it."
"I am very attracted by bad taste - it is a lot more exciting than that supposed good taste which is nothing more than a standardized way of looking at things."
"What I find interesting is working in a society with certain taboos and fashion photography is about that kind of society. To have taboos, then to get around them that is interesting."
"I have always avoided photographing in the studio. A woman does not spend her life sitting or standing in front of a seamless white paper background. Although it makes my life more complicated, I prefer to take my camera out into the streets...and places that are out of bounds for photographers have always had a special attraction for me."
"In my pictures, you never know, that's the mystery. It's just a suggestion and you leave it to the audience to put what they want on it. It's fashion in disguise."
"I have an instinct for finding the odd location, the dismissed face, the eerie atmosphere, the oppressed mood,"
"My pictures walk a tightrope. They never know. ... I am one of the very few "enfants terrible" still claiming to take fashion photography. I am not a fashion photographer, I am not a photojournalist, I am not a portraitist. The photographs are a little like the women that you see in them. A little out of balance with their surroundings, waiting anxiously for the right person to find them, and thinking that perhaps they are out of their time. They move forward clutching their past about them, as if the ground of the present may fall away."
"I do not like superficiality, but I try to look at what's behind the subject."
"Photography for me is not representation, but the revelation of another dimension. By using the camera, I touch lightly on another life, opening the door to a different world."
"Working with fashion is wonderful because image-making can be absolutely and completely creative and removed from reality. It is about fantasy, fabric, invention. In order to work, however, a fashion photograph must function in two ways: it has to be the portrait of a woman wearing a dress, but also the portrait of a dress worn by a woman."
"I feel more when the photos are not sharp...In my work, there is nothing rational or logical ... It's about instinct and feelings."
"You gotta have style. It helps you get down the stairs. It helps you get up in the morning. It's a way of life. Without it, you're nobody. I'm not talking about lots of clothes."
"A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste - it's hearty, it's healthy, it's physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I'm against."
"I think part of my success as an editor came from never worrying about a fact, a cause, an atmosphere. It was me - projecting to the public. That was my job. I think I always had a perfectly clear view of what was possible for the public. Give 'em what they never knew they wanted."
"Fashion is part of the daily air and it changes all the time, with all the events. You can even see the approaching of a revolution in clothes. You can see and feel everything in clothes."
"Fashion must be the most intoxicating release from the banality of the world."
"Fashion film isn't like ordinary film, and shouldn't look to those references; it should be more akin to fashion photography. Fashion film is just moving fashion photography, its garments in movement. The medium is non-narrative. Whereas film has narrative, a fashion photograph doesn't have to narrate...fashion film needs to look at itself as a different thing from regular film, or conventional film. Remove the narratives and use the codes of fashion photography..."
"...clothes are made to be seen in movement..."
