If you connect with someone just once, that's something. But if you can connect twice, that's something else.

Mostly I take photographs in times of research. Whores' Glory was shot in 30 days, 10 days for each segment, but the research for each part lasted a couple of months.

La Zona is such a closed area, a dangerous, outlaw area. My time in the Zona was a time outside of society, almost out of the real world. And the girls there had such a sense of irony and sarcasm. They were also really interested in my film. They'd be like, "Thank God we live in Mexico, because our kind of prostitution has a heart. We wouldn't want to sit behind a glass cage or be sold by our own mothers. We have free will."

Sometimes the presence of a camera is like opening a door.

If you connect with someone just once, that's something. But if you can connect twice, that's something else.

I don't aestheticize anything. I don't even use lights. The working girls do one thing all day: They make themselves pretty. That's their job and their money. In a way, I had the best makeup artists, hairdressers, and art designers in the world.

As a filmmaker I cannot make anything beautiful. I'm Platonic in that sense.