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.

I didn't do well in high school, but I took photography, and I loved being able to capture moments.

The film [Dream of Life] came together when we started editing; it was organic, it became nonlinear and it was its own animal. And I didn't want to tame it, either. I wanted it to be different. It's not your typical documentary.

Patti [Smith] was my experiment, to be honest. And the film is what we got out of it. At the end of the day, I learned a lot about how to make a film.

We had a hodgepodge of footage. We didn't film [in Dream of Life ]all the time - we would just film periodically, so nothing was synced and nothing was slated.

I thought about how to film something, how to take pictures of it and how to mix it all together. And I was getting that through Patti [Smith] - because she takes pictures, performs, writes; she does so many things, and that was a big inspiration to me. It helped me realized that I'm not just a fashion photographer. I wanted to do all these other artistic things as well, and during filming my mind opened up to those possibilities.

I just wanted to be Patti's [Smith] messenger and get her word out there.