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I loved working with Avedon.

Having worked with so many of the geniuses, I'd learned so much. It's the best sort of photography school, to work with people like Penn or Avedon or Meisel.

The great photographers of life - like Diane Arbus and Walker Evans and Robert Frank - all must have had some special quality: a personality of nurturing and non-judgment that frees the subjects to reveal their most intimate reality. It really is what makes a great photographer, every bit as much as understanding composition and lighting.

I felt like I was in the best photography school in the world - I had Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn teach me.

Richard Serra, the great sculptor, personifies an artist for me.

I didn't know who Avedon was. I was 18 years old. I dropped out of high school in the 10th grade. I had no idea.

One of my all-time favorite photographers is Irving Penn. I wish I could have watched him work.

There are so many great 19th-century photographers, and it's really my favorite period, but the amateurs did such beautiful work.

I admired the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon as much as I respected the grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour.