I've been really interested in focusing on the aspects of my Russian heritage I'm proud of. I'm actually em­barrassed to tell people I'm Russian, because it's become such an awful place.

I think what inspires me is in a constant state of flux...it's easier to stick to photographers and perhaps cinematographers, though the great medieval, Mannerist, and Baroque painters of Italian, Spanish, Flemish, and German origin are a constant source of inspiration, along with select modernists like Dali.

There's only a handful of people I trust completely, and I know who they are. Other than that, I pretty much don't trust people.

I tried ice-skating and wasn't very good at it.

I love academics, theory and all that. I love and admire that and try to do as much reading as I can.

At age 12 I had an obsession with Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and then proceeded to watch all the other Kubrick films I could including a doc called Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures in which it was revealed to me that he started as a photographer...I got a camera sometime shortly after, but spent many years just photographing flowers in my neighborhood.

Maybe silence is something we're uncomfortable with as a culture, I don't know.