I like not knowing too much about somebody I'm photographing, because the process also becomes an experience for me to learn about .

Because the filming process was so organic and there was no script, the film [Dream of Life] was literally telling us what it wanted to be in the editing room.

That was an amazing experience [making Dream of Life]. It's hard to imagine that we were editing every day for a year. And it was pretty extraordinary; it also went by super fast. But every day was an experiment.

We were just hanging out and getting to learn about each other. But I think trust was a really big thing. Patti [Smith] is a good friend, somebody I can talk to.

I was making a film [Dream of Life] about Patti [Smith], but I was taking pictures, too.

When I started photographing Patti [Smith], I knew that there wasn't a whole a lot of information out there about her. I was periodically interested in films, and so I just kept asking her if I could come around.

Angelo Corrao was our editor [in Dream of Life], and he was just so diligent and so old-school in the way he looked at editing. He would take my far-out ideas and tame them and make sense of them.