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.

I never courted that but it's nice when it's people you respect and they respect your work. It's thrilling.

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.

When I put my big retrospective together in '96 [for the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York], I saw that there were all these pictures of people inside looking out. All these pictures of women in water and mirrors. I don't know what it means.

At the same time as the UK Vogue one, I did a shoot that took about 40 days of friends and people I admired in Paris, for French Vogue. This is how I met Maria Schneider in June and which began our friendship.

I was recently interviewed for radio in relation to the "Thanksgiving" show [2001] at the Saatchi gallery that I was part of. The interviewer said that people in London were very disturbed that I showed a picture of myself battered ("Nan One Month after Being Battered", 1984) and they thought that I set it up. I was accused of deliberately putting on a wig for that particular picture.

I think it's obscene that many people are starving to death from anorexia. It's been said many times, it's trite. But when so much evil is going on against, for example the Afghani people, where women are being so oppressed that a woman's body is a battlefield.