I relied mainly on other artists, who I think are smarter than critics, any critics or curators or anybody like that. They really know.

I think you say the word in your mind anyway, you know. When you look at a word, you say it.

A word refers to something in the real world and so, in a way, does a photo. It's not the thing itself, but it's a kind of suggestion of where you might look for that thing.

Teaching I realized took up a lot of my time. I was a kind of a teacher that spent time with students, spoke to them after class, tried to help them out. I'd talk with them personally about their work and try to get out of them what they were thinking about, forcing them to thinking seriously and not just falling back on all the ideas that they had picked up someplace. And so I took my job teaching very seriously and that - as a result, it took up a lot of time.

So it sort of dawned on me that you have to build into your work the fact that it's going to be shown in different kinds of places and different kinds of light. And the fact that the surroundings and where you're going to be shown is always changing, so that should really not affect the meaning of the work. It should be part of what the work is about.

I make my own surprises and I'm always surprised to see what I do, to see it when it's finished and the biggest challenge is once I finish it, it's not a failure. It's not a flop.

I've always said my biggest influence is my, just, the last work I did, the last piece I made.