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.

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.

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.

I don't collect art at all. I'm fascinated by art. I receive a lot of presents. My house is full of things, but I am not a collector; it's just that people I work for, and friends, give me a lot of things. There are pictures all over the walls, sculptures, mobiles and paintings. I am embarrassed because I wonder what I should do with them.

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.

My feeling is that for years now it has taken a much too big part in how women are being visually defined today. Heartless retouching should not be the chosen tool to represent women in the beginning of this century.

I bought my first camera to photograph my brother's children. I learned a lot from that experience. The value of innocence and of not being focused on yourself, and I have to say that these things have remained with me to this day. I can immediately feel when someone is putting on a camera face.