Urban ruin 2

Very simply, what were your beginnings?
I began taking pictures because I was interested in my surroundings. I had already seen a few pictures by Brassaï, to whom I still owe a debt of gratitude. That man showed me that one could make very moving pictures from surroundings that are scorned and that so-called cultivated peopled would not even look at. For me it was the kind of locale I had always encountered. It was my life. So, instead of grieving over my surroundings and saying, "Oh, dear, this universe is so sad and rotten and sinister", I realised that this was the very environment which filled Brassaï and Kertész with wonder and I too could work within it.
Robert Doisneau

Dialogue with Photography, Paul Hill & Thomas Cooper