The woman is always more important than the clothes.

A photographer is a photographer and an artist is an artist. I don't believe in labels or titles. Why should a painter or sculptor who has probably never challenged the rules be an artist just because his title and an art school education automatically make him one.

In the beginning of my twenties, I started transcendental meditation. For years I did nothing else. Every holiday I went to courses. Meditation is a real simple instrument. You don't need a long beard or a sari. It's meant to bring you to yourself. It's as easy as that. And that's what it's all about, being alone with yourself every day, for 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening.

In 1990 I did a story with Helena Christensen about a woman who lives in a trailer in the middle of the desert and finds a little crushed UFO with a martian who has survived the crash. She takes him home, and they fall in love. Later he has to meet with his fellow martians who have arrived to rescue him. It's a sad ending. This was my first truly narrative story and apparently the first narrative story in fashion 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 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.

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.