Fashion is where I make my living. I'm not knocking it; it's a pleasure to make a living that way. Then there's the deeper pleasure of doing my portraits.
A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.
For me a house or an apartment becomes a home when you add one set of four legs, a happy tail, and that indescribable measure of love that we call a dog.
A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there - even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity.
Every scene is a challenge. There are technical challenges, but often it's the simplest challenge where you feel a sense of achievement when you pull it off.
I've always been a fan of Westerns, but my favorite kind of Westerns mostly were Sam Peckinpah's Westerns, and they mainly took place in the West that was changing.
Stanley Kubrick went with his gut feeling: he directed 'Dr. Strangelove' as a black comedy. The film is routinely described as a masterpiece.
Like Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, and so many others before me, sexual imagery has always been a part of my photography.
When Kubrick decided to go the black comedy route with his movie, he thought of me to give it that flavor.
We don't have real hours and we don't have a boss, so artists create rules for themselves that they then break. It's transgressive in such a personal way.
I think the prom is very serious also. It's an American ritual, it's a rite of passage, and it's very much a part of this country.
I know that my mind is so A.D.D., and I want instant gratification - and photography can provide me with that - but at some point, I want to make an independent feature.
I think your average fan probably just assumes that the same person directs every episode of their favorite series, week in and week out.
I've been criticised for pretty, smiley photographs, but at least someone is happy! In my mind, I am always giving the image to the sitter.
My favourite words are possibilities, opportunities and curiosity. I think if you are curious, you create opportunities, and then if you open the doors, you create possibilities.
I emerged in that incredible moment in the 1980s when all kinds of social questions about subjectivity and objectivity, about who was making, who was looking.
I don't like directing a lot of people. So trying to keep things really simple and elegant is my preferred way of working.
I want the pictures to be working in both directions. I accept that they speak about me, and yet at the same time, I want and expect them to function in terms of the viewer and their experience.
I don't actually like blocking actors. I prefer giving actors freedom. They don't have to step on a precise mark with me. Instead of giving marks to the actors I like to give marks to the camera.
I love California. It has such a strong contribution to the history of culture, and popular culture. For better and worse, of course. Even the worst can be interesting to some degree sometimes for somebody creative.
Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.
