I'm very moved by the fact that people are drawn into the pictures and that they do bring their own history and their own interpretation to the photograph. I think that's why they work in a certain way.

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.

It's about finding meaning through light. I'm always interested in tensions. A primary one is the collision between the familiar and the strange.

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 do think that dread is about a certain kind of expectation. And the fact that a picture can never resolve itself the way a movie can - maybe that's a specific kind of dread that becomes associated with a picture.

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.

I don't deliberately look for something dark or bleak or disconnected, in fact that's not something I'm even conscious of in the work as I'm making it. I'm always trying to create beauty, reveal hope, show the sense of longing that exists in isolation and loneliness, and capture the search for something greater inside all of my subjects.