If I had to pick a single word to describe what my pictures are all about, I would say 'secrets.' As a child I always had a secret world and my favorite book was “A Secret Garden.

The people I work with, the people I photograph, become a kind of family for me.

If I had to pick a single word to describe what my pictures are all about, I would say 'secrets.' As a child I always had a secret world and my favorite book was “A Secret Garden.

If I am lucky, something new and inexplicable often appears in front of my lens. I am always surprised by the mystery of how my best images appear. That excitement and shock of discovery makes my life at these moments a gift.

I never chased after any particular school, never really had mentors; I really just did the work that was true to me.

My early self-portraits appeared effortlessly and seemed like equivalents for my deeper emotions. Many critics remarked that the images had an almost other-worldly haunting presence. For me, they were simply my own reality at that point in my life. What I was trying to reveal was my inner soul in all its fragile complexity. Without knowing it, I was trying to peel back the layers that shroud and bind us all as we struggle to reveal our own authentic selves.

I've always been obsessed with penetrating the female psyche. When I shoot, I'm like a tornado. I never sit down, never take a break, never eat. I'm focused on getting that moment of revelation, of insight, of poignancy, of meaning.