Pro-Vietnam War Demonstrator, Manhattan, New York, USA, 1968
(catalog number 401Y-020-013)

I MOVED to New York in 1966. It was an exciting time and I started going to demonstrations to photograph, as I still do now. Most often it's not the march itself that is interesting to photograph but the periphery. In the 1960s and 1970s, the media did not have the power it has today; it was a much more honest time. You could feel that the pictures you were taking were real and that they were your pictures. Now, there are dozens of photographers and videographers at every event, and everything seems staged for the media. Even when I go away from the action and find a portrait to shoot, within a minute there are other photographers closing in to get the same picture. It's very frustrating.

This photograph was taken at a Vietnam demonstration. Both sides were marching: those for the war and those against it. I ventured into the streets where the pro-war demonstrators were lining up, and I took this man's picture. Suddenly, I felt a pain across my back. A paranoid pro-war protester had hit me with a big stick. I guess I didn't look like I was on the right side. I just went on photographing.