photographed in Tokyo, Japan on September 4, 2007

If you don’t like “street photographer,” how do you respond to that other tiresome phrase, “snapshot aesthetic”?

I knew that was coming. That’s another stupidity. The people who use the term don’t even know the meaning. They use it to refer to photographs they believe are loosely organized, or casually made, whatever you want to call it. Whatever terms you like. The fact is, when they’re talking about snapshots they’re talking about the family album picture, which is one of the most precisely made photographs. Everybody’s fifteen feet away and smiling. The sun is over the viewer’s shoulder. That’s when the picture is taken, always. It’s one of the most carefully made photographs that ever happened. People are just dumb. They misunderstand.

That’s an interesting point, particularly coming from someone who takes — or rather, composes and then snaps — lightning-fast shots.

I’ll say this, I’m pretty fast with a camera when I have to be. However, I think it’s irrelevant. I mean, what if I said that every photograph I made was set up? From the photograph, you can’t prove otherwise. You don’t know anything from the photograph about how it was made, really. But every photograph could be set up. If one could imagine it, one could set it up. The whole discussion is a way of not talking about photographs.

From Visions and Images: American Photographers on Photography by Barbaralee Diamonstein. Published by Rizoli, New York, 1981.