People don't have time to wait for somebody to paint their portraits anymore. The money is in photography.
My first big job was an Abercrombie &Fitch campaign. But my mom wouldn't let me skip school for it so I missed half of the shoot. When we got there we realized Bruce Weber was the photographer we knew we had made a mistake!
My mom was a photographer and whenever they needed a baby for a modelling job she'd stick me in front of the camera. That's how it started.
It was my mom and I against the world. We lived in New York in this bohemian lifestyle where an extended group of artists and photographers were like my aunts and uncles.
I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive but I have photographs of her.
I've exchanged messages and photos of an explicit nature with about six women over the last three years. For the most part these communications took place before my marriage though some have sadly took place after. To be clear I have never met any of these women or had physical relationships at any time.
We knew that if the photos of CIA officers conducting authorized EIT (enhanced interrogation techniques) ever got out the difference between a legal authorized necessary and safe program and the mindless actions of some MPs (military police) would be buried by the impact of the images.
The problem for me is that I've never actually studied photography so it's quite a steep learning curve. Cameras these days do so much for you automatically but I still think there's a point where you should actually know the technical side.
Having photographed the landscape for a number of years and specifically working with trees and in the forest I found without consciously thinking about it that it was a great learning experience for me in terms of organizing elements.
If anybody wanted to photograph my life they'd get bored in a day. 'Heres Matt at home learning his lines. Here's Matt researching in aisle six of his local library'. A few hours of that and they'd go home.
Now my knowledge of photography was terribly limited.
I like photographs which leave something to the imagination.
I had this wild imagination. I was never me. All my childhood photos I'm in fancy dress playing a Russian refuge or Marvelous Mad Madam Mim.
I still have a photo on my wall of the greatest idol I will ever have in my life and it's myself at eight. Because that's when the forces of imagination have the same value as the real world when they're an instrument of survival: when my mother disappeared and I imagined a mother. That was me at my best.
I hope to stay unemployed as a war photographer till the end of my life.
Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.
You can't control the paparazzi. But if you go to Coachella you're going to get photographed. Whereas if you're at home walking down the street you probably won't. It's something I've learnt to navigate my way around but I try to keep my private life private.
A fan sent me a letter and a $10 bill. It's a short letter - all she said was 'Hey since it's harder for you to go out these days without getting photographed here $10 for a pizza.' I was like 'Aww she sent me money for a pizza so I could eat at home!'
You had to be aware that I saw that photography was a mere episode in the history of the optical projection and when the chemicals ended meaning the picture was fixed by chemicals we were in a new era.
Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels in the deepest sense about what is being photographed.
I was on the yearbook staff so I would take out film cameras and Nikons and take photos around school and at sporting events and things like that. We had a darkroom as well. I just loved it. I also saved up for a video camera to video my friends and cut and paste the videos together and I gave them to all of my friends for graduation.
It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.
A good photographer can make you look incredible even when you're not feeling very sexy.
I think things like food the food of the south is sort of the common tie that binds us all Black and White the sense memories. It's a very particular part of the country.