RR: Part of it is… yes, it is political outrage, and it is a fascination with how we’re—I’m not going to go off on too much of a diatribe—how we’re sheep being led in a direction [that is] unbelievable to me, because I really feel like I grew up in a golden age, absolutely. Going to every play on Broadway for $2.60… my parents were very cultured. Very modest means, but we would go to a lot of museums and institutions. And then I look at what goes on today, and I see a very different world. Especially in terms of Congress. So I try to figure out how we got here.

And I did a talk in Claremont, where instead of being introduced, I asked them not to introduce me. And people are just milling around, and everybody was chatting, and I just stood there. And then, when I didn’t say anything after awhile, people were just quiet. I’m behind a lectern. And a couple of people were still talking, and then it stopped completely.

And then I introduced the whole concept of the authority of silence. In ways that you’re not accustomed to it. You have to become aware of it. So just as Rick and I are sitting up here, and you’re listening to us, sitting there in parallel rows that extend… there’s a certain authority here that you’ve ceded to us.

And we have ceded so much as a society and a culture. It’s unbelievable. And everything that goes on in terms of the perfect timing. People interned at Guantánamo, at trial now—the appellate court has said these people can face military tribunals because they’re now enemy combatants, but they’re something else now… it’s almost like I Spy, or Maxwell Smart, something super-secret that they’re now dubbed, and “Now we can try you [in a military tribunal].” How can you do this? Where is habeas corpus? How has this been allowed to continue?

So in a very simple way, I’m not sure if I’m flattered or insulted that Rick calls me an artist rather than a photojournalist. I’ve always aspired to be a photojournalist. But I feel there’s a limited amount of time in which you can do work that you look at and you say, “Line, form, texture, composition.” It just doesn’t make sense in the contemporary world. It has to be engaged for everybody at every level, to do something that’s more assertive in recapturing something.