The camera is as much a part of my everyday life as talking or eating or sex.

I'm very influenced by a lot of things, but my chief influence is my friends and what I see and what I feel and my own experiences and memory.

In '83 I started travelling round Europe with my slide show. It wasn't until I moved to Europe and got accepted in a big way in Berlin in the '90s that I got acceptance by the big art world in New York. I didn't really get to be known, or in the market, til '93 in New York.

One of the things I love so much about Valerie [Belin] is that she inhabits her body so completely. She has no self-consciousness about having stretch marks or having given birth. It's just so amazing that she has nothing to hide. Whereas all these other women see every little - supposed - imperfection - anything irregular is seen as an imperfection.

I always thought if I photographed anyone or anything enough, I would never lose the person, I would never lose the memory, I would never lose the place. But the pictures show me how much I've lost.

Usually people just do their own work. But I want to deal with the place and what it means to show in a mental hospital.

I never read theory. I think that was to my benefit.