I didn't have much of a life in crime as a graffiti writer.

Growing up, my room was covered in posters. I was like, "I want to make posters."

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.

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.

The cool part about New York is that you can do that. You can talk to all the people you admire.

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

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.