I started photography more or less by accident when I was already 27. I was taken on as an assistant by a photographer who was a friend of a friend and I very quickly understood the potential of expression in photography.

Your inspiration is better if it comes from many different sources and your sensibilities will transform all those influences and inspiration into your own visual world. It's like reading the book instead of watching the movie.

I remember how difficult it was to perform certain operations on gelatine prints. A few weeks ago I asked my gelatine printer at Picto, "Can you make just the shadows a little bit brighter?" He gave me a very strange look because in Photoshop you just turn a button, and we're used to that now, but it is totally impossible in gelatine silver printing.

Inspired by words you have to create images to tell the story, while it's much more difficult to find your own images with a film for inspiration, because someone has already done it for you.

The photographer, even in fashion and portraiture, has to have a standpoint. It's important to know what you stand for, no? Most people just take pictures but they stand for nothing. They follow trends and don't know why.

I have a very big apartment in Paris but you can't really move around there anymore; piles of books everywhere. I don't want any more books. I have too many books; sometimes I have to buy another copy of a book that I know I have somewhere in my house or office because I can't find it.

I would love to photograph Angelina Jolie. A friend of mine is working with her on her next film and told me what I was already suspecting, that she is extremely interesting. I have never seen a picture of her that conveys all of her complexity. That would be a fabulous challenge, to find that in a photograph.