It's easy to play fun forms, surfaces, and languages against each other. Teenagers do this every day, producing winning memes from random patterns. I need the joke to hurt more; I want it to sink deeper than the postmodern grin.

I like to put a single photograph in different contexts, to see how it takes on other meanings, how being locked in a new dialogue exposes another potential. It's like dating other people in order to get to know yourself.

I often have to feel my way through the alternatives. The 99-cent store is attractive because it offers objects that aren't promoted in glossy magazines. The work then becomes a form of alchemy.

I'd like the photographs to potentially be meaningful to a wide range of people. They do not grow out of the reportage mode, this was always clear to me. Personal imaginations blend into each other and create our visual cultures. No one is a neutral observer of this field.

I'm experimenting and pushing as far as I can. I typically don't know what I was aiming for until I see what I ended up with. Then I can study and choose.

Los Angeles made me less interested in making my images move. Everything is evolving and regressing. It can be hard to pinpoint which changes are linked to place. I believe California has made me more polite. I get a little surprised when I rediscover how direct and rude Norwegians can be.

Making photographs can be a way for me to bring something up and into consciousness, something either shared or individual.