For all the talk of my pictures being narratives or that they're about storytelling, there's really very little actually happening in the pictures. One of the few things I always tell people in my pictures is that I want less - give me something less.

In "Twilight," the narratives are more literal, and the event is much more spectacular. The pictures in "Beneath the Roses" are much more psychological and grounded in reality.

If my pictures are about anything at all, I think it's about trying to make a connection in the world. I see them as more optimistic in a certain way. Even though it's very clear there's a level of sadness and disconnection, I think that they're really about trying to make a connection and almost the impossibility of doing so.

I think that, in a sense, there's something about photography in general that we could associate with memory, or the past, or childhood.

What the artist attempts to do is to try and tell a story. Attempting to give physical expression to a story that's internal.

There's a parallel between me going through these enormous efforts to try to make a moment that means something - and in a way, the figures are doing the same thing. There is that parallel, for sure.

It is really important to have an obsessive need to construct something, to understand something from your own experience.