What lives in pictures is very difficult to define... it finally becomes a thing beyond the thing portrayed... some sort of section of the soul of the artist that gets detached and comes out to one from the picture. 

 In his Day Books [Edward Weston] records how photographic sessions were frequently interrupted. The eye was replaced by the penis, making a photograph by making love. It is here we begin to see an oscillation between photography/sex, (between the print/the real). 

 You can’t point a camera at someone and find out what’s in their head. But it does the next best thing—it lets you speculate. 

 Is passion what we are? Is that what we are in pictures? Is what we are in pictures almost real? Maybe it’s become the “most” real thing. 

 A photograph records both the thing in front of the camera and the conditions of its making... A photograph is also a document of the state of mind of the photographer. And if you were to extend the idea of the set-up photograph beyond just physically setting up the picture, I would argue that the photographer wills the picture into being. 

 She leaned against a whitewashed wall—lips quivering—nostrils dilating—eyes heavy with the gloom of unspent rain clouds—I drew close to her—whispered something and kissed her—a tear rolled down her cheek—and then I captured forever the moment—let me see f.8—1/10 sec. K1 filter—panchromatic film—how brutally mechanical and calculated it sounds—yet how really spontaneous and genuine—for I have so overcome the mechanics of my camera that it functions responsive to my desires—my shutter coordinating with my brain is released in a way—as natural as I might move my arm—I am beginning to approach actual attainment in photography—that in my ego of two or three years ago I thought to have already reached—it will be necessary for me to destroy, to unlearn, and then rebuild upon the mistaken presumptuousness of my past—the moment of our mutual emotion was recorded on the silver—the release of those emotions followed—we passed from the glare of the sun on white walls into Tina’s darkened room—her olive skin and somber nipples were revealed beneath a black mantilla—I drew the lace aside— 

 My work is really simple, actually. I’m just playing with forms of changing. 

 All the technique you can learn—and you should learn everything you can—you should have it here in the fingers not here in the head—and then you forget about it.