I kept shooting but started making drafts of the work, essentially spending a few days a month sequencing and editing, hanging things up on the board, showing them to trusted confidantes from in and outside the photo world. It started to take its shape naturally over time until I kind of ran out of ideas.

That kind of unease, that melancholy, is of course partly my interpretation, but partly, I think, it's something that's really there [in America] as well. It resonates with this moment and the sort of alienation from the power structure a lot of people feel, as well as a certain amount of desperation, in the hope of disrupting the power structure so they can live better lives. I think in those ways, it's intimately connected to today.

I think a lot of the work I've done and a lot of the work I'm going to do in the future still ties to 9/11 and the fallout from it.

[The Middle East conflict ] just kind of ran its course for me. For a long time I could justify doing it to myself, no matter how irrational it was. It was important to me and my work. And I just don't feel it in the same way any more. When it comes up and it's important to me, I'll do it, but more out of sense of duty than desire - which used to be a big part of it.

It was sometimes provoked by assignments, then I'd go back on my own dime if I really clicked with a place. And sometimes it was just hanging out with my family or friends.

I began to explore America in more general terms. I really started this work in 2009. I got the bulk of it done as I was easing out of Disco Night.

I kept shooting but started making drafts of the work, essentially spending a few days a month sequencing and editing, hanging things up on the board, showing them to trusted confidantes from in and outside the photo world. It started to take its shape naturally over time until I kind of ran out of ideas.