I'm not going to hide behind anything.

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

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 put all of my time into art because I couldn't go back to Jersey and work at Starbucks.

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.

You have to be able to observe life as if you were a camera all the time, constantly looking at light and the way that things are placed and the way people hold themselves. You need the ability to see something in someone or something that no one else really sees and be able to bring that to light. Basically, you have to be an obsessive crazy person.

A lot of my close friends have committed suicide or died of heroin overdoses.