Some time ago, we went to Asia and took a camera along, and I began to do what I'd done even years ago doing people. I couldn't get interested in it. And I did hundreds of photographs of details of the monuments as sculpture.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I sculpted for four or five years. Mostly for my own amusement, I decided to do a picture book, and that was kind of a turning point.
Art is very tricky because it's what you do for yourself. It's much harder for me to make those works than the monuments or the architecture.
Even though the museums guarding their precious property fence everything off, in my own studio, I made them so you and I could walk in and around, and among these sculptures.
Just as Renaissance artists provided narratives for the era they lived in, so do I. I'm always looking beyond the surface. I've done that ever since I first picked up a camera.
I love my sculptures, and I was lucky I had them for 50 years because no one would look at them, and I really liked having them around.
I'm not a sculptor; I'm a hard-edged model maker. You give me a drawing, you give me a prop to replicate, you give me a crane, scaffolding, parts from 'Star Wars' - especially parts from 'Star Wars' - I can do this stuff all day long. It's exactly how I made my living for 15 years.
I photographed rocks and trees and tide pools and nudes and all that stuff for years and years. Until 20 years ago when I found that I could do it in the studio and never have to travel.
I've been working in sculpture and painting since 1920.
I am not a performer but occasionally I deliberately work in a public context. Some sculptures need the movement of people around them to work.
I was primarily interested in people, and people in action, so that I did nothing photographically in the sense of doing buildings for their own sake or a still life or anything like that.