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I defend what I called “the pleasure of photography”, and I’m trying to make sense of the aspects of my life that have mythic aspirations, rather than, say, the unimpressive dirt under the kitchen sink. I suppose I’m involved with this circular logic where yesterday’s cliché becomes today’s abject. If you’re a white heterosexual male from a wealthy country, no one wants to hear about your personal problems. You’re swimming in banality. Maybe this is the reason I’m touched by unhappy fashion models: our culture laughs at their problems. It’s obvious, isn’t it: I identify with sad, pretty girls.

Sometimes I try to change allegories into symbols. That’s how romantic the project is. I don’t believe there are rational answers waiting. There isn’t a solid platform to view or criticize the world from, and there isn’t one correct way to decode the images.

The Christian church cannot fully realize what it means that its main mystics—people like Meister Eckhart (in Germany) or St. John of the Cross (in Spain)—were mainly experimental writers. They were brilliant poets. Ecstatically—by critically expanding and challenging their chosen medium—they met God: they created meaning. Poem after poem, their writing made new experience possible.