Awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Publishes a letter in Aperture, objecting to biographical pieces the magazine has run about artists Adam Fuss and Joel-Peter Witkin, but particularly to Witkin’s slaughter of a cow to make “art.” He writes, “Pictures that involve serious, avoidable animal abuse by photographers are rarely defensible in any way. The ends pursued turn out to be, by some mathematics of the spirit, almost invariably trivial (even if announced histrionically) or [socially] harmful, often amounting to little more than a statement of unresolved confusion or horror.”

Publishes Why People Photograph and Listening to the River.

Spends most of the year sorting and packing a lifetime’s production of prints; about 1,500 are set aside for what is hoped will become an archive. Awarded the Spectrum International Prize in Photography, which supports publication of What We Bought. Also publishes Cottonwoods and West from the Columbia.