One of the fashion things I ever did was for Helmut Lang for Visionaire magazine and I used people from all genders. People from the age of 18 - like James King - to people like my friend Sharon [Stone] who's about 50 or older. People of all different shapes and literally all different genders and my boyfriend at the time and his daughter who was 11.

My desire is to preserve the sense of people’s lives, to endow them with the strength and beauty I see in them. I want the people in my pictures to stare back.

I'm very much interested in water and women in water. I've been photographing that for years although I didn't really know it at the time.

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

If I say something honestly, generally, I am being completely honest and don't tell me I am lying. It drives me crazy to be told I set up my pictures. How does it benefit me to lie? I guess they are afraid to believe it and are afraid to look at it.

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

I had said that when the first Bush got elected that I would leave the country. And when the second Bush wasn't even elected properly.