Waist Deep in Tequila
The basic reason that they think this [men standing waist-deep in tequila] evolved this way was, first of all, the practical issue: These agave hearts are 300 pounds. and you've got to chop them in half, roast them, and crush them. The easiest way to do that is in a pit, so they started with pits in the ground. They're stirring with their arms and legs because there's a naturally occurring yeast on your skin that starts the fermentation process. The drink of the Aztecs and the Olmecs and the Tolmecs and the Mayans is called pulque—fermented agave juice. It's not distilled. They don't use this process anymore—now they throw in buckets of yeast. But they're still doing it for tourists at Don Julio [distillery]. [The picture in the book] is from Herradura [distillery], who stopped doing this five weeks after we were there.

Soul Stealing
There are tribes in Africa and Indonesia that won't let you photograph them because they believe you're stealing their soul. It turns out to be true. We are. There's no other way for me to look at this—I am definitely taking something from my subjects, something very precious, if the picture works. If I haven't taken something precious from that person, then the picture won't work and you won't respond to it. The flip-side of that is that we have to leave something behind; there's a price for everything. So you have to give of yourself completely and utterly without a moment's hesitation to make the picture that you dream of making. You go in extremely humble and carefully into an environment that is not your own. You present yourself as an offering, with your intentions, which are good.

But you recognize that your intentions are also self-driven and that you want to make great pictures. And there may be a benefit to these people if the photographs are good, [or] there may not. You may be exploiting them. You have to be open to that with your subjects, even discussing it with them. When I've done stories with people who've had disabilities or terrible diseases or who were in some way oppressed, there would be moments when we would discuss what would happen to them if these pictures were public, and how they would feel about it. I would ask them to think about that. Of course there were other times when I wouldn't bring it up at all because I was manipulating them, I had to get the picture for my magazine.

Self-Portraiture, Friends, Empathy
A lot of times artists can go through their lives in denial about many, many issues because you're just so involved in the work. You may be a lousy husband or a lousy father—it doesn't matter, you're focused on your work—and that's what drives you. You could be a complete failure as a human being but people love your work. There's no reason to deal with the issues that would make you a better person. One of the things about self-portraiture that may be important and useful for the artist is the pondering of the self. After all, the unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates said. Just some of us delay that examination.

A question I asked a group of young photojournalists at a conference where I was on a panel didn't go over really well. The question was, basically: What if we spent more time with our families and friends? What if we had friends? I was questioning whether if we were able to develop relationships and spend more time and invest in that, then maybe we would become more mature people, more mature human beings. And then maybe we would understand our subjects more and be more empathetic toward our subjects.

Border Issues
There's nothing in the American schools about Mexico, Mexican history, the true history of the border. You're not hearing this on "Lou Dobbs" every night." I'm glad he's bringing up the issue, but we need to know that America, in one of two elective wars in its history, attacked Mexico, unprovoked, 20 years after the Alamo, after we had already taken Texas.

We took an invasion force of Marines in 1848, raised the American flag over the Zacolo [Mexico City's central square], conquered the whole country, and at the point of a barrel after six months took half the land mass of the country. When they look across the border, Mexicans don't see America—this was only 150 years ago. They teach this in third grade in Mexico. So Mexicans are a bit nationalistic.

I had the Mexican consul in Austin thank me. I gave this talk down there, and I mentioned the border issues, and he said, "You know, I've been trying to tell my 10-year-old here about Mexican history, and she keeps on bringing out her American history book from school. And she's like, 'Dad, you don't know what you're talking about. It's not here in the book, I don't believe you.'"

It's so frustrating, because we're not taught anything about this. Most people don't know that a rogue general went down to Mexico, that there was no war declared, that the war was financed by J.P. Morgan and some other Wall Street people to get the oil and the gas and the minerals—without apology. Where is that in the conversation about the border?

Missing the Moment
As I got older, and started shooting news and invaded enough privacy, I started to put the camera down at times and go, this is so horrible, maybe it doesn't need to be photographed. When you start thinking like that, you're no longer a news photographer because you can no longer be really effective. You can't ask permission. You'll miss the moment.

The Neck-Grabbing Deity
I'm criticized for shooting too much, I shoot a lot of film, but every once in a while you get really lucky. I feel like the deity, god, or energy or whoever is running this universe reaches down and grabs me by the neck and twists my head and says, "Shoot now!" And I turn around and I see stuff that I cannot believe is happening. Pictures are a gift. You could stage [photos] all day long and never make a picture. For a real moment to occur—it is occurring, and you're capturing it or you're not.

You can't say, "Do it again." You learn to anticipate and you can create opportunities for yourself; you can encourage stuff, and you can manipulate events. I'm working as an artist. I'm not going in saying, "I'm a journalist." I'm having an impact on these people; it's a different set of rules. I have a different hat that I wear if I'm on assignment for a magazine than if I'm shooting for myself. I'm not misrepresenting anything, I'm saying, "I'm an artist."

Documenting Silicon Valley Pioneers
[In the 1980s and '90s, Menuez documented the rise of Silicon Valley with unprecedented access to almost every major technology company, photographing digital pioneers like Steve Jobs.]

You knew they were changing the world. You knew that these were geniuses, the best and the brightest, in rooms, saying, "What if you could put the power of a mainframe in a one-foot cube that would sit on a desk of a student at Stanford and he would cure cancer?" These were the kinds of conversations they had. "Alright, everybody, let's work nights and weekends until we do it!" "Um, Steve, we are already working nights and weekends."

I thought, this is like when they were building the trains. Most of the stuff that I was shooting was infrastructure, like the trains. Most of the things that succeeded from that era were things like the Internet, the piping that runs the world, and the software that runs the pipes. The driving motivation for me was: The shit these people are doing is going to change the world and change everything; somebody ought to document it, even if it is boring. I hope I have a few pictures—at least a hundred—that aren't boring.

Steve Jobs
There's no doubt Steve has a genius for putting his finger on the pulse of a human-empowered world by technology. His design is driven by natural impulses and instincts and gestures that human beings already have, versus that we have to adapt for the stupid machine. That's a very enlightened view. He has this genius for focusing like a laser and instilling this inspiration in his team. I think if you look at life in general people who are successful have that ability to laser-lock on a problem. That means they'll fail big or succeed big.

The Kiss
Doisneau's The Kiss was set up. He used models. Shocking! The interesting thing about The Kiss is that it's a spontaneous, fresh moment. It looks like it was a candid moment, because it is! I've been hired to do ad campaigns, and what the clients want is The Kiss-type of feel. Well, you can't fake that. I could hire actors and models and tell them, "I want you to make this wonderful spontaneous kiss." But you have to allow it to happen. There is a magic, indescribable thing that electrically courses through the people you are photographing to make that come alive and be a lasting moment.

And honestly, I don't know that you could make that happen. You can make an opportunity for it to happen, but you have to use every fiber of your being and your training and every skill you've ever learned, and then be lucky. So Doisneau, to get that picture, was damn lucky and damn skilled. Even though he might have hired models, he still had to get the moment.

No Captions
I apologize in a way [for the absence of captions in Heaven, Earth, Tequila] because the expectation is, particularly coming from the Day in the Life books, that there's going to be a caption for each photo, telling you that this is that and this is that. I can't do that book anymore, that's not who I am now. It's more like, I want to be Larry Fink when I grow up. I want to be Larry Fink. Larry Fink is a god. Look at this. [Flips through Fink's Boxing.] What you have is Larry Fink living with the boxers, and he's interpreting it. He's capturing it, it's a document, it's narrative, it's literal. You put it all together and it's his feeling for this, it's his expression of it. You don't have to look at it literally. But that's where I'm heading now as an artist. I know how to tell a story, but there's a deeper thing I'm trying to get to now that can't be expressed with a caption.