Everyone I'm photographing, I feel like I'm remaking a family, in a way. My brothers and sisters are my heroes. So many of my models resemble them.

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

In a lot of ways I look at these old photos, and I don't know if I would have been able to communicate with these people on this level if I didn't have a camera. I think I would still be so shy.

I'm going to put every aspect of myself out into the world and try to convey it through photography.

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

I have a really big family, and pretty much all my work is about my brothers and sisters. I'm the youngest of eight - my mom had seven kids in seven years, and then she had me 11 years later - so I was basically raised by all these teenagers.

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.