We all strive to find moments of clarity, of order.

The whole reason I make these pictures is for those moments of clarity. For that single moment, everything seems to make sense in my world. And I think we all look for that in our lives, because our lives are generally filled with chaos and confusion and disorder and complication.

I really love that dynamic between beauty and sadness...theres always these moments of quiet alienation, the sense of disconnect, but also, these moments of possibility.

Every artist has a central story to tell, and the difficulty, the impossible task, is trying to present that story in pictures

I think that's the nature of representation. No matter what it will disappoint, it will fail in some way.But that's also part of the magic of art. If every picture met my expectation in exactly the right way, there'd be no mystery; there'd be no gap between what's in my head and the picture I make.

Since a photograph is frozen and mute, since there is no before and after, I don't want there to be a conscious awareness of any kind of literal narrative. And that's why I really try not to pump up motivation or plot or anything like that.

I was really fixated when I was a child. Again my mother was just talking to me about this, about how I would how try to get details exactly right. I guess I was always very persistent.