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.

No place could be less sympathetic to my politics than America.

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.

Yes, photography saved my life. Every time I go through something scary, traumatic, I survive by taking pictures.

As a non-Catholic, and since I was a child, I have been obsessed with the ritual and the beauty of Catholic art. I look at Renaissance art all the time.

I had my first museum showing of my slide show in Rotterdam, in 1983. I love Rotterdam. I love harbour cities in general.

In a way, it [my style] is an homage. But I didn't really know about it at first. But then when I started living in Berlin in the early '90s, I started getting ID and Dazed and Confused. I was shocked how close things were to my work.