I learned a lot about the images of pornography and how much they dealt with close-up, when a person is at their most vulnerable and having to reveal details about themselves. I wanted to combine the eternal in two different manners. There is the biological eternal - here is our species reproducing - and then the transparent, spiritual aspect of it.

Whenever you finish an artwork and the viewer comes and views it, at that moment you've given up control.

Art to me is a humanitarian act and I believe that there is a responsibility that art should somehow be able to effect mankind, to make the word a better place.

The entertainment industry, the advertising industry have taken [the] tools from the art world and made themselves much more politically potent. We are really devastated and very impotent right now. A photographer just working for an advertising company has a platform to be much more politically effective in the world than an artist.

I think about my work every minute of the day.

I believe in sensuality. I believe in sex. I believe in the survival of the species. I like aspects of things that are ethereal, but I like the reality of nature and embracing the way nature works, and aspects of interrelationships between male-female, aspects of the body, the way the body has changed over thousands of years . . .

A photograph for me does not have a sense of spiritual seduction, it does not have an essence, that this is something that permeates and which is eternal through time.