A lot of people seem to think that art or photography is about the way things look, or the surface of things. That's not what it's about for me. It's really about relationships and feelings...it's really hard for me to do commercial work because people kind of want me to do a Nan Goldin. They don't understand that it's not about a style or a look or a setup. It's about emotional obsession and empathy.

If I want to take a picture, I take it no matter what.

Actually, I think what is being shown as beauty in fashion magazines right now has become particularly ugly. This kind of straight, blonde very conservative.

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.

[I influenced by ]the work of early [Michelangelo] Antonioni, Orson Welles and [Carlo] Pasolini, I love [Nicolas Jack] Roeg's film "Performance".

I knew from a very early age, that what I saw on tv had nothing to do with real life. So I wanted to make a record of real life. That included having a camera with me at all times.

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.