Elliott Erwitt

I appreciate simplicity, true beauty that lasts over time, and a little wit and eclecticism that make life more fun.

You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what's around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy.

To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

Professionally I've evolved with what's required, but the pictures I do for pleasure haven't changed, except for the cars in the background, the clothing. I haven't changed at all.

I like museums in Berlin a lot, especially in the eastern part. They're extraordinarily good.

I enjoy nothing more than spending time with my loved ones, young and old, and at least once a year we get together for a formal family photograph.

In those simpler days, you could just take pictures of movie stars and show them the way they were, as normal human beings. And if I felt part of any movement at the time, it was just to do that - to be journalistic and photograph what is, rather than what is made up.

My 'work' is about seeing not about ideas.

Most photographers work best alone, myself included.

Making books is a very specific kind of activity. It's not really a collection of your best pictures - although it is - but it's also a way of presenting your work so that it's not repetitive, so that it flows, and so that it makes sense in a book.