I just get inspired to take a picture by the beauty and vulnerability of my friends.

I have no ambivalence about myself wearing make-up or designer clothes but I have an enormous ambivalence about what the fashion world has done to women.

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.

My life there[in New York] was almost entirely about gay men for 30 years.

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.

Of course I was wearing make-up, I never went anywhere without red lipstick for 25 years! It was a form of self-preservation for me to continue to wear lipstick even though my face was broken.

The main thing that I want to say is that I don't think women are at their most beautiful in their adolescence or in their early 20s.