Having been a photographer for more than thirty years, do you have a credo for your art?

As a photographer, I always feel responsible for creating images that people can invest in. A beautiful photograph is not enough. Sometimes, it can even risk being frivolous, or trivial. A good photograph must be a declarative statement. It needs to bear out the “major part of the story” right on the spot. But that does not mean that photography cannot endure beyond an instant. Quite the contrary, it is an ethereal art that must last.

How has your relationship with the camera evolved over the years?

I have been working towards caring less and less for the camera. Solid photographic artists like Henri Cartier-Bresson understand the importance of the camera being invisible to himself. It is very easy, actually, to have the camera invisible to others, but not to the camera man himself. It is like a pianist, constantly working to render the piano invisible to himself. Although a camera is small, many who hold it are very conscious of it. Some even end up constructing impressions of themselves with it. The truth is, you don’t need to look like a photographer in order to be a photographer! Defining photography is very different from defining camera.

Being invisible is crucial to taking the most subtle photographs. When I was in India, my camera never came out until one month later. I think being invisible is one way a photographer shows respect for others and his environment.

Writing seems to be a vital component of your creative process, for you often furnish text for the photographs. Does the process of expressing yourself through words contradict the silence behind your images?

What you said is very interesting. For some reason, word and image are always one thing for me. Word and image are the same thing, that is. No difference betwen them, at least for me. The relationship between the two is such that one leads to another.

I have been writing daily for more than thirty years. I have also been traveling for more than thirty years, and I don’t feel tired. In fact, I feel tired only when I stop writing or am no longer taking good photographs! So switching gears from one medium to another is not tiring for me. I don’t want to stop traveling, either. Sometimes, I feel that I am “everywhere.” I keep a journal. Traveller begins from there: it unfolds as a series of journal entries, except without a chronological sequence. I don’t like things that match or are strictly symmetrical, and I don’t think in numbers or sequences! In a way, I also like to think of the prose snapshots in my texts as the photographs I took.

That said, I don’t necessarily take photographs every day. It is not up to me to say, “Oh, this is the perfect photograph I must take today.” I can prepare the moment (which usually does not render worthy pictures), but I can’t choose it. A photographer can’t say that it is/was him (or someone else) who brought him to the image; rather, it is the moment that brought the photographer to the image.

In fact, I practise a “one picture per day” policy or philosophy. My students used to find that overtly harsh. It is not. It makes you think and choose, versus the attitude of “consumerism” — taking pictures with a cellphone, for example, and click, click, click all the time without any real reflexion. I strongly believe that when you have nothing to say, pass it. This is likewise for taking responsible photographs, which should be “pure” and not polluted scenes. They are instants of prescient vision.

Do you imply that moments are the hardest obstacle to overcome in producing good photography?

Yes and no. Anticipating moments is vital, but there are so many magical fleeting moments as well.

I can’t emphasize more the importance of streets and street life as far as these fleeting instants are concerned — life is right there in the streets. You don’t need to prepare moments for a good photograph, they’re right there in the streets. Kurt Vonnegut once described a life as “unstuck in time.” The act of taking photographs translates into portraying these “unstuck” moments that constitute life.

Speaking of that which is hardest to achieve in photography, I think it could be silence. Also, the eye can get tired. It’s not a machine. When it’s tired, it must rest.

You’ve also just mentioned traveling and the feeling of “being everywhere”…

Yes. I haven’t had a country for long time. I live everywhere and nowhere.

Being a traveller is not being a tourist. A traveller does not ask the question, “Where is the best place to eat? The best hotel to stay?” A traveller is always awake, he stays engaged in life. That is living, which is also the definition of photography.