Peter van Agtmael

I was taking all prints and I brought them to the Magnum meetings, trying the old Josef Koudelka trick: Give them to…

— Peter van Agtmael

I think a lot of the work I've done and a lot of the work I'm going to do in the future…

— Peter van Agtmael

That kind of unease, that melancholy, is of course partly my interpretation, but partly, I think, it's something that's really there [in…

— Peter van Agtmael

You find [reverberations from 9/11 ] in them most unexpected places, like graffiti on a wall. Sometimes it's a faded picture; sometimes…

— Peter van Agtmael

Nothing is over until there's something more decisive than your own thoughts.

— Peter van Agtmael

It was sometimes provoked by assignments, then I'd go back on my own dime if I really clicked with a place. And…

— Peter van Agtmael

The big question that everyone is asking themselves, or what they should be asking themselves right now, is what role has the…

— Peter van Agtmael

Sometimes the picture is more interesting than what is going on. Sometimes the picture is suggestive of greater things in society or…

— Peter van Agtmael

I'm a constant editor. Every few months or so I make a ton of 4x6 prints. I put them on a magnetic…

— Peter van Agtmael

The travel ban that was imposed by the [Donald Trump] administration is a very direct reverberation of 9/11.

— Peter van Agtmael

I am still covering conflict to some degree. I was back in Iraq. I've covered quite a bit of the Israel and…

— Peter van Agtmael

Buzzing at the Sill is from a Theodore Roethke poem called "In a Dark Time." I'd heard a small part of it…

— Peter van Agtmael

I read the poem [In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke] because I was intrigued and had one of those strange senses:…

— Peter van Agtmael

I realized how little I knew about my own country. I had grown up in the suburbs and, after college, I moved…

— Peter van Agtmael

What I was doing for those assignments wasn't always directly tied to what I was doing for myself, but it gave me…

— Peter van Agtmael

[Buzzing at the Sill] deals with the margins of America, a lot of parts unseen. Well, parts that are seen and familiar…

— Peter van Agtmael

Even though most people were disconnected from [travel ban], the moment amplified a fairly massive and somewhat irrational fear that exists in…

— Peter van Agtmael

[The Middle East conflict ] just kind of ran its course for me. For a long time I could justify doing it…

— Peter van Agtmael

I went out to cover the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fundamentally [in Buzzing at the Sill] because I was interested in…

— Peter van Agtmael

At first Disco Night wasn't meant to be a book, although I'm always thinking about that in the back of my mind.…

— Peter van Agtmael

I began to explore America in more general terms. I really started this work in 2009. I got the bulk of it…

— Peter van Agtmael

I kept shooting but started making drafts of the work, essentially spending a few days a month sequencing and editing, hanging things…

— Peter van Agtmael