I'm always working in this universe - whether picturing hamburger joints, Virgin Marys, domestic scenes - using these "vacant-faced" women as a medium to question universal truths.

Having a book is actually like a great master - helping to build a universe and unify work - especially in my pictures where there is such a strong signature, yet with a set of rigorous rules to it.

It's amazing how if you turn up at a studio without an idea, a picture will take itself from momentum, and you quickly can lose control.

I did a series of dark, desperate women shoots, my exhibitions weren't being well received, and then 9/11 happened, and I said to myself, "Have I gone too far?" Now I look back and realize going out on a complete limb at the time was right - well, people seem to be really responding to my message now, anyhow!

I had been reading a lot of J.G. Ballard in the 90's and was fascinated by the idea of the vapid consumer society, the erotic charge of modern life, where the consumerist things we are coveting are just another form of destroying oneself - a modern world of uncertainty, where lost souls are trying to grab onto something for sense of contentment.

When I began in the late '90s, I felt quite lonely. We were coming out of the grunge era; it was the time of Corinne Day, The Face, the height of the YBAs, where models had to be "real," on real locations with no lighting. I rebelled against the grungeys - I didn't find the faux naturalism to be representative!

The work is never finished because women forever will be eternally mysterious to me - and I will always find that point where people are lost in thought, observed but lacking self-consciousness, the most beautiful.