I always wanted to be the underdog. For me, as a portrait photographer, it's the kiss of death to become well known. I did my best work when no one knew who I was. People weren't threatened by me because they didn't think I was a big deal.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I became a photographer in order to be a war photographer, and a photographer involved in what I thought were critical social issues. From the very beginning this was my goal.
I've always had a healthy disregard for authority - it allows me to do my job as a portrait photographer and not as someone who is playing the power game.
I realized some of the pitfalls of being well-known; it was nice if you were successful, but it made it just that much harder to take when you failed.
I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.
I realized I didn't want to be a photographer. I gave it up, but I still worked that job in the restaurant and I found myself constantly hanging out in the kitchen.
Photography belongs to a fraternity of its own. I was young and enthusiastic and wanted to take good pictures to show the other photographers. That, and the professional pride of convincing an editor that I was the man to go somewhere, were the most important things to me.
In my career, I really set out not to develop too strong a persona so that you wouldn't have a hard time imagining me in any given role. I wanted to pleasantly confuse the audience on who I was.
Many people misunderstand me - I'm quite happy to be called a photographer. All of a sudden, the art world has caught up with photography, and they are trying to hijack us.
Aside from my modelling, by the early Nineties I was also starting to work as a photographer, which I loved.
I'm not a good photographer, not a good writer. I'm a pretty regular person whose insecurity is so pervasive that it makes me always feel vulnerable.