... anybody who has spent time with cameras and photographs knows that images, like gravestone rubbings, are no more than impressions of the truth.

I am a photographer who likes to make images, but I also want to get a sense and understanding of images that have already been made. I don't fabricate worlds; I pay attention to the things that already surround us.

Los Angeles functions for me as a kind of holy template. It is postwar America.

I'm attracted to the garden, without a doubt, but I always try and image the wolf that's there, too. And that wolf would be us. It's not that we're malevolent or evil - we're marvelous, fantastic, tool-bearing beings and capable of so much - but there are so many of us, and we don't tend to take responsibility for what we do.

When I go up, especially if I'm paying for a small helicopter and pilot, I'm on. I've got an hour and a half and the clock is ticking and it's costly and I enter into a super-heightened state of mind.

Flying was certainly formative for me; I have a deep and lasting ease with it as a result.

I realized that if I wanted to truly talk about vastness and the sublime and scale and the West - recurrent themes in my overall work - I needed to engage with the vast ocean that is Los Angeles.