If I didn't have to earn a living somehow, I would never have taken a fashion photograph in my life.
My grandfather and his wife came to America at the end of the 19th century from Hungary. Everyone started out on the Lower East Side. They became embourgeoise and would move to the Upper West Side. Then, if they'd make money, they'd move to Park Avenue. Their kids would become artists and move down to the Lower East Side and the Village.
I thought it would be a good idea to look at New York with this half-European, half-native eye and really do something to get back at this city that I thought really gave me a hard time when I grew up.
Memories. That's the thing about photography. I look at the contact sheet, and it brings back everything: whether I was tired, whether I was full of beans.
Fashion had no interest for me. I would take photographs in the studio. I would go back home, and my wife would say, 'What is the fashion like for this season?' And I would say, 'I have no idea.'
I discovered that I could do whatever I wanted with a negative in a darkroom and an enlarger.
I like dark humor. I think the world is very funny and tragic, and my photographs are basically dark Jewish humor.
I'm known for fashion photographs, but fashion photographs were mostly a joke for me. In 'Vogue,' girls were playing at being duchesses, but they were actually from Flatbush, Brooklyn. They would play duchesses, and I would play Cecil Beaton.
I was making a film on Muhammad Ali in 1964, and I went to Miami to film everything around the fight for the world championship with Sonny Liston. I had the good luck of flying down to Miami, and there was one empty seat, and the guy sitting next to this empty seat was Malcolm X.
Don't have rules, taboos, or limits.
You do things for yourself, and you do things for other people, and you hope that these things coincide.
I thought it would be good not to hide the fact that you're taking a photograph, and have people react and come in close and also make a commentary on what's being photographed: 'This is a photo, this is my point of view.'
When I made 'Polly Maggoo,' it was more or less the end of this collaboration with 'Vogue' because I made a caricature of the editor-in-chief and the fashion people, so they didn't really adore me.
French photography was basically poetic, and mine was vulgar and brash and violent, except that there's never any violence in the photographs: it's only in the photographic style.
Why did I take fashion photographs? I thought it was fun. And there was a lot of money.
My father was convinced that America was the greatest place in the world. I'm afraid I didn't have the family I would have dreamed of.
I had no real respect for good technique because I didn't know what it was. I was self-taught, so that stuff didn't matter to me.
I like the streets. I grew up in the streets.
I like film. I'm old fashioned.
I did a film on Muhammad Ali before he was champion. I was there when he became champion in 1964. I was happy to be able to document the development of a real American hero.
