The cool part about New York is that you can do that. You can talk to all the people you admire.
I slowly began making a few photos with animals over the years, and I liked how people reacted to them. When I would have the animals on set, I'd notice the way the models would interact with them and there was so much true emotion that you rarely see between two human beings.
I was pretty Irish Catholic Jersey, the middle of the line.
I couldn't wait to come to New York to reinvent myself.
I didn't have much of a life in crime as a graffiti writer.
A lot of my close friends have committed suicide or died of heroin overdoses.