After 25 years as a photographer for The New York Times based in Washington, D.C., Stephen Crowley has retired. His incisive and revealing photographs pierced the public veneer of Washington politics, bringing the viewer into the back rooms of power.

He was also part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize award for feature photography in 2002 for photographs from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mr. Crowley spoke with James Estrin about covering politics. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

You’ve spent three decades in Washington photographing politics. Was it a worthwhile pursuit?

It absolutely was worthwhile.

For me the question is, can a historian look at our work 100 years from now and write a historical book just by looking at our pictures in The New York Times? And if they can, then we and the editors have succeeded, and The New York Times has succeeded.

We’re right there with the headline writers — we’re trying to draw people to read stories. But you know, I always thought the perfect picture was honest, fair, and created like a well-turned phrase, an interesting composition that drew people in. And I’ve always tried — each day— to add to the narrative.

That’s what I tried to do with my career. Create a narrative.

So you wanted to be a historian in real time?

Yes. A documentarian and a historian in real time, always thinking of where the value of this will be in the future.

Covering politics in the U.S. has become increasingly difficult, but it has always been about artifice. Politicians are trying to get you to take their photograph they staged. How do you go beyond that and, god forbid, actually make a truthful image?

I’ve always tried to be fair and peel back the artifice as best I can. I’m also wary of asking for too much access because it can cost too much of your independence.

In a perfect world, out of every 10 pictures, the subject I was covering on a campaign, for instance, would love one, hate another and say the others were fair. I wasn’t there to help them get elected. That is not my job.

What is your approach?

I’ve always been an outsider, even within the Washington media. I had an advantage of being at The New York Times, which of course gets your phone answered, but I always did try to stand back, and I never felt compelled to have to compromise just for the sake of getting an extra moment with a politician. I never looked away from uncomfortable moments in my coverage.

You’re known as someone who is rarely standing where the other photographers are.

I try to layer my pictures, my report, with as much information as I can. To me, standing in front of a witness sitting at a table, shooting it with a variety of lenses, just didn’t explain the context of the hearing and the political maneuvering of the panel. I always tried to put myself in a place where I could watch both sides of every issue.

You’ve made quite a few humorous political photographs, like your “If I Were Your King” series.

I lost the title of “Class Wittiest” in high school to my twin brother by a mere two votes. I’ve chased that white whale ever since.

Society is losing its sense of humor. Free speech and dissenting opinion seem to be increasingly viewed as intolerance. Even Voltaire would be mindful of the folks in human resources.

Humor can be a form of anger, and there is a lot to be angry about. Voters are angry.

This is how it’s been the last several election cycles. You get off of a plane, you get on a bus, you drive right past all the problems and go right to a handpicked crowd with a hand-selected backdrop, and everybody has had signs handed to them. The whole thing is staged, and the candidate is never in danger of having to answer a question he or she doesn’t want to, or face an uncomfortable moment. Meanwhile, people feel more alienated than ever.

What’s the answer to that?

All of us in the media need to get out there and listen to people. Because they lost their jobs, their traditions, their main streets and their voice. And you know, they don’t feel like any of the leaders, or national media, have any regard for their views.

With all those medium-size newspapers suffering financially, their national political coverage has disappeared. Once the people lost their local morning and afternoon newspapers there were fewer impartial observers paying attention to who was running for school board, who was controlling the county budget, or the big corporations coming in and squeezing out the little hardware store. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe that’s not; maybe that’s globalization, but it hasn’t worked out for many people.

So what’s the answer? More sunshine? I don’t know. You tell me.

Well it seems to me that the news cycle has sped up in the last five years.

It’s changed in the last six months. It really has. Doug Mills and I are now essentially doing the same work as A.P., Getty, Reuters, and A.F.P. Only they have much more staff.

The pace of our work in Washington really picked up since Obama took office. Remember all the newsmagazines disappeared from Washington in 2009-2010, and The New York Times finally landed the White House pool position that they’d wanted for years. Now it has to be maintained 24/7. So it was Doug and I, and whatever intern we had, covering the entire town.

And with Trump, when they say be there at 9, if you dare show up at 9:01 you might miss something.

Have American politicians changed since you first came to Washington in the 1980s working for The Washington Times?

I think they’re different.

I got here in ’86, when Reagan was the outsider and nobody in a million years would have imagined he would turn out to be the kind of president that he was.

But there was a lot more comity back then. Politicians could meet after hours, go to their hideaways, knock a couple back and work things out. Without staff, that doesn’t happen anymore.

The miracle of our democracy is that we really are represented: the good, the bad, the insane and the genius.

Who’s going to run now? We will make your life a living hell if you run for office. And if the media doesn’t do it, social media will. That’s why good people are discouraged to run for office. It takes a special kind of person that doesn’t really care what kind of brick that you throw at them. We’re all imperfect people. It was easier, 20, 30 years ago to run for office.

So you started at The New York Times in part shooting, part lab job?

I moved from The Miami Herald to The Washington Times in 1986 with the goal of covering national politics, I was turned down by every wire service and magazine in town, multiple times. Can’t blame them. My style didn’t fit in.

I finally got the lab tech job at The New York Times in March of ’92. Nancy Lee (the former director of photography), to whom I shall ever be grateful, was the only one that took a chance.

A whole lot has changed since 1992. This is a dramatically different business, a dramatically different job, a dramatically different news organization.

It is. But the mission hasn’t changed a bit.

I never felt like my job had changed. Only the technology changed, and I’m pretty simple about technology. Every time I got a new camera I just set it on manual.

You said the mission hasn’t changed. What is the mission, then?

Well, truth, honesty and fearless, objective news coverage. It’s always been important and it always will be. It’s difficult. It’s not always easy. Technology is also important. I think I was one of the earliest adapters of digital. I was using it in the ’96 campaign with Bob Dole, and I was one of the first out there with the video camera. But committing yourself to the beat, having a thorough understanding of the issues and moving pictures to New York that your editor can absolutely trust, is paramount.

And you’ve got to invest in journalism, and you have to invest in photojournalism.

I’m in it for the good of The New York Times and for the sake of the reader. I hate to sound like a Boy Scout about it, but that really is it. It’s all I had. That’s all we have.

O.K., but now you have the time, what’s your future as a photographer?

I never took it for granted how lucky I was to have this job. I’m the luckiest man in baseball, frankly.

I’ll take a little time off to regroup, and then try to get out there and do some stories that matter. There’s plenty of stories that need to be done.

But I don’t think I’d go near covering politics as news ever again.

Really?

You can never go home again. You’re either all in or you’re all out. That’s the only way to do it.

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Follow @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Stephen Crowley is also on Instagram. James Estrin is also on Instagram. You can also find Lens on Facebook and Instagram.