A Quote by Ken Burns
I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style.
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Composition in photography is almost as varied as composition in music or words -- melodic or atonal, safe or daring -- and can enhance subject, theme, and style. Every photograph you take involves you in some compositional decision, even if this is simply where to set up the camera or when to press the button.
Composition is a side issue. Its role in my selection of photographs is a negative one at best. By which I mean that the fascination of a photograph is not in its eccentric composition but in what it has to say: its information content. And, on the other hand, composition always also has its own fortuitous rightness.
By trying many different approaches, you may slowly reach the point where you say more about yourself than about the objects or the landscapes or the people you photograph - and this is where photography really interests me.
Black-and-white photography, which I was doing in the very early days, was essentially called art photography and usually consisted of landscapes by people like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. But photographs by people like Adams didn't interest me.
In making portraits, I refuse to photograph myself as do so many photographers. My style is the style of the people I photograph.
But it is also untrue that I have nothing specific in mind. As with my landscapes: I see countless landscapes, photograph barely 1 in 100,000, and paint barely 1 in 100 of those that I photograph. I am therefore seeking something quite specific; from this I conclude that I know what I want.
I never set out to work on the concept of androgyny. For me, it was more about trying to find a wardrobe that would fundamentally appeal to both men and women: Trying to find the right shirt, the right jeans, the right trouser - but on different landscapes.
If I photograph you I don't have you, I have a photograph of you. It's got its own thing. That's really what photography, still photography, is about.
I think that electronic music mirrors the complexity of "information landscapes." You carry the terrain in your mind.
I definitely don't have a music industry goal because I've done that and completed that work. My quest is to find new platforms for music to live. Once we do that and find different ways of getting music to people, whether that's 5000 or 1 million people, I'll feel successful. I want to make sure I'm adding something to the marketplace, so that's my goal.
You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.
"Though many painters and sculptors talk glibly of "going in for photography," you will find that very few of them can ever make a picture by photography; they lack the science, technical knowledge, and above all the practice. Most people think they can play tennis, shoot, write novels, and photograph as well as any other person - until they try."
Press information is serious information, but press information is also manipulated by people who want you to think that this and that happened. So it's the old thing that you still cannot trust photography at all or you have to know who is distributing the photograph. In terms of cell phone photography, I think nobody cares about a photograph anymore because they're taking so many pictures just for fun.
Paste is a great music lover's resource. I tend to agree with their album reviews and find their interviews a bit more intriguing than those of other music magazines.
When we look at a painting, listen to a piece of music, read a novel, or watch a movie we are taking in the artist's composition. The composition is the totality of the work.
For me, documentary photography has always come with great responsibility. Not just to tell the story honestly and with empathy, but also to make sure the right people hear it. When you photograph somebody who is in pain or discomfort, they trust you to make sure the images will act as their advocate.
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