Originally, one of the reasons I was drawn to photography, as opposed to painting or sculpture or installation, is that of all the arts it is the most democratic, in so far as it's instantly readable and accessible to our culture. Photography is how we move information back and forth.

You have this ambition to make something perfect, exactly right. Of course, necessarily, it fails in some way and you have to accept that for what it is, and then you're on to the next thing.

Usually I'll drive to certain locations over and over again, over a course of months really. And then it might just be I hit it at the right time, and the right light. And then I might go to that location over and over again, and then what happens in that lag time where - the image sort of locks in - all of a sudden I see it in my mind's eye.

The suburban landscape is alien and strange and exotic. I photograph it out of longing and desire. My photographs are also about repression and internal angst.

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

I think maybe the figures - that's a good word - the figures in my pictures are stand-ins for my own need to make a connection.

What's important to me is that there's a necessary alienation between me and the subject. I don't want to know them well. I don't want to have any intimate contact with them.