I trained as a painter, and I still love painting, but eventually I became aware that the physical aspect of painting didn't really suit me. I didn't enjoy working in the medium. It's very messy. I prefer to have it clean, with a nice computer.

Childhood has been idealised as a lost garden paradise to which we can never return. We are excluded from this world of carelessness, innocence and unity. But the imaginary kingdom is nothing more than a projection of adult ideas and concerns onto the image, an expression of our own yearnings. By photographing children alone, divorced from any social setting, I allow them to exist on their own...I am exploring the equivocal connection between self and world.

[My subjects] look lost because that is how I see life. I think we are all a bit lost, lost in a world we can't understand.

My pictures are not really about the children that I photograph. They're more like actors in a film. I think you can always recognize the children, but they are alienated from their real appearance and become more like metaphors.

The images are compositions of photos superimposed over painted backgrounds, then finished off with digital alterations.

Usually I work with a digital camera and compose my works digitally or give them a finish on the computer, in order to make them meet my ideas perfectly.

I still think as a painter - especially in terms of structuring a picture... I carefully choose the models, costumes, requisites, and backdrops of my photographs.