Richard Avedon taught me that if you go into a photo session and come out with what you had hoped for, it’s a failure. You need to be surprised if you want it to be magical.

Richard Avedon taught me that if you go into a photo session and come out with what you had hoped for, it’s a failure. You need to be surprised if you want it to be magical.

It's entirely ridiculous and hopeless to try to compete with somebody who made such a huge contribution to photography... I knew when I went into photography that I would be compared to my mother. I thought to myself, what can I do about that?

My mother's work has been an enormous influence on me, but not literally. By that I mean, my photographs don't look like hers. That makes it difficult to compare them. What they do share is an emotional intensity.

When I ask to photograph someone, it is because I love the way they look and I think I make that clear. I'm paying them a tremendous compliment. What I'm saying is, I want to take you home with me and look at you for the rest of my life.