“His photographs, seen by millions, make momentary events and strange occurrences all over the world our common property.”

Documentary is, therefore, an approach, which makes use of the artistic faculties to give vivification to fact – to use Walt Whitman’s definition of the place of poetry in the modern world.

Wherever there is disaster, the newsman is there. If he cannot find disaster, he searches for the odd and the peculiar, the exotic and the unfamiliar.

Over the years, photography has been to me what a journal is to a writer – a record of things seen and experienced, moments in the flow of time, documents of significance to me, experiments in seeing.

The greatest challenge to the photographer is to express the inner significance through the outward form.

The direct use of the camera for what it can do best, and that is the revelation, interpretation, and discovery of the world of man and of nature.

The leavening of aesthetic approaches continues. While it is too soon to define the characteristic of the photographic style today, one common denominator, rooted in tradition, seems in the ascendancy.

The present challenge to the photographer is to express inner significance through outward form.

More and more are turning to photography as a medium of expression as well as communication.

We are not interested in the unusual, but in the usual seen unusually.

It has been important to me, as an historian of photography, to understand photography by photographing.

If the historian will be faithful to the photograph, the photograph will be faithful to history.

The fundamental belief in the authenticity of photographs explains why photographs of people no longer living and of vanished architecture are so melancholy.

The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats.

There is something about believing in God, that makes God willing to pass over a million people just to anoint you. I believe God will always turn out to meet you on a special line if you dare to believe Him.

MTV made a huge impact. Heavy rotation took you from selling 1m albums to 20m albums, and that meant a lot of dough.

It’s mainly the high-end luxury market now that drives much of the fishing in the sea. It’s not feeding the starving millions. It’s feeding a luxury market.

Ants are the dominant insects of the world, and they’ve had a great impact on habitats almost all over the land surface of the world for more than 50-million years.

The sudden release of five million barrels of oil, enormous quantities of methane and two million gallons of toxic dispersants into an already greatly stressed Gulf of Mexico will permanently alter the nature of the area.

By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins, groupers, turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that prospered in the Gulf for millions of years had been depleted by overfishing.

When I write a scientific treatise, I might reach 100 people. When the ‘National Geographic’ covers a project, it communicates about plants and fish and underwater technology to more than 10 million people.