I couldn't wait to come to New York to reinvent myself.

I got a lot of attention when I was really young, and people have it in their minds that I'm still 24 years old. So I made the decision that I had photographed everything I was interested in in New York. New York is a town you have to embrace, but you also need to leave. I may revisit it one day, but for me it's a place to live rather than one to make work in.

Everyone started to have a camera. That's when I started to travel outside of New York and go into nature.

I was growing up in the suburbs; I was one of eight kids. So I did have a community when I was younger, but all of my brothers and sisters were older.

In college, all my friends were graffiti writers, but I never wrote graffiti. I wanted to participate and do something cool on the street, so I'd make these portraits of people. I'd isolate them on a white wall, make a silkscreen of it, and do these portraits in bathrooms and all around. That's how I started the Polaroids.

A camera gives you a purpose.

It's weird being a photographer because you really have to divorce yourself from the image.