The cool thing for me about moving to New York was that I got to create a new family.

I don't want to be an artist that gets stuck doing one thing. I don't want to be an artist who people look back at and say, 'His early work was really great.

There was no luxury. I never got on an airplane until I was 18. We drove everywhere. My dad was like, "Waste not, want not."

I knew my ticket out of the suburbs was art school, so I worked really hard to develop my portfolio and get a scholarship.

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.

The cool thing for me about moving to New York was that I got to create a new family.

I know that my mind is so A.D.D., and I want instant gratification - and photography can provide me with that - but at some point, I want to make an independent feature.