D: I hope that what I'm going to bring up won't be tiresome for you, too The term "street photography" and your name have been synonymous for quite some time. But the streets are not the only place where you've worked over the last twenty-five years or so. You've worked in zoos and aquaria, Metropolitan Museum of Art openings, Texas rodeos. There must be some common thread that runs through all of your work. How would you describe it?
W: Well, I'm not going to get into that. I think that those kind of distinctions and lists of titles like "street photographer" are so stupid.

D: How would you prefer to describe yourself?
W: I'm a photographer, a still photographer. That's it.

D: If you don't like "street photographer," how do you respond to that other tiresome phrase', "snapshot aesthetic"?
W: I knew that was coming. That's another stupidity. The people who use the term don't even know the meaning

D: What do you look for?
W: I look at a photograph. What's going on? What's happening, photographically? If it's interesting, I try to understand why.

D: And how do you expect the viewer to respond to your photographs?
W: I have no expectations. None at all.

D: Well, what do you want to evoke?
W: I have no ideas on that subject.

D: Then you don't have much faith in the longevity of the surge of interest, either economic or aesthetic, in photography. Do you see it as something typical of this moment?

W: I don't know what you mean by aesthetic.
D: Well, we're assigning the surge of interest to economic reasons, rather than the fact that more and more people think of photography as a legitimate art form.
W: I don't care how they think of it. Some of these people are acquiring some very good pictures by a lot of different photographers.
D: For whatever motivation
W: Right. Who cares?


D: What did you have in mind?
W: Surviving, that's all. That's all I have in mind right now.
D: Flourishing, too?
W: That's unexpected. But I'm surviving. I'm a survivor. That's the way I understand it.

D: What made you move to Los Angeles?
W: I wanted to photograph there

D: Have you ever had any particularly difficult assignments or photographic moments?
W: No, the only thing that's difficult is reloading when things are happening. Can you get it done fast enough?