To me, as a visual artist, I don't want to get into the theory of Buddhism. There are many Buddhism theories and they fight each other, like Christians as well.

Humans have changed the landscape so much, but images of the sea could be shared with primordial people. I just project my imagination on to the viewer, even the first human being. I think first and then imagine some scenes. Then I go out and look for them. Or I re-create these images with my camera. I love photography because photography is the most believable medium. Painting can lie, but photography never lies: that is what people used to believe.

My concept was, within the five-minute video, for people to see one million Buddhas. So I made a group of the images and it keeps accelerating to reach this one million point. The movie was invented from the still photos.

Where do you draw the line as a human being? Written record is only, what, a couple thousand years? And this scientific revolution is less than a hundred years. And computers only a few decades! We've changed so much. It's amazing, the speed of changes.

Photography is like a found object. A photographer never makes an actual subject; they just steal the image from the world... Photography is a system of saving memories. It's a time machine, in a way, to preserve the memory, to preserve time.

I don't love the postmodern statement: "You shouldn't be spiritual if you are the artist."

I want to put it back together now, this artistic expression that contains religious feeling. I want to investigate: What was the origin? What's happened in the human mind? Can we trace back the moment of the creation of human consciousness? And why did only humans gain consciousness, not other animals? So, evolution? I don't know whether or not I can believe evolution. Maybe we wait for another 100,000 years and then apes get consciousness.