Photographer

I'm often in Venice in November and December, when it's foggy and wintry, and the decorations in the shops and the lights in the churches make the place feel both Christmassy and melancholic.

I would never ask somebody to do something where I felt that it's not right or it puts someone in an uncomfortable position.

I'm interested in the person I photograph. The world is so beautiful as it is; there's so much going on, which is sort of interesting. It's just so crazy, so why do I have to put some retouching on it? It's just pointless to me.

I don't care what other people think. I hate conforming, that you have to wear this to a business meeting or that to a dinner. I've never worked that way.

When I came to London in 1986, I was amazed at how prudish everyone was.

One day, I'll be photographing Kate Moss in Paris, then I'll be on Stephanie Seymour's ranch with her hundred horses wondering what exactly it is I'm doing there.

When you're a kid, what you learn in school about being German has a sort of heaviness about it, and you have a sort of guilt with you.

I like the idea that things can exist in different formats - in a gallery, a fashion ad, in books.

I had no visual imagination as a child. I liked playing football. That was it.

Normally, whenever I try to photograph my mother, she is extremely impatient and will only stand for a minute and insists on knowing exactly what I'm doing.

There was a stage in my career when I started to have problems with the vanity aspect of the subject. I got frustrated and bored with it. Then I thought, actually, how does it feel to be photographed? That's when I started to photograph myself. That was an incredibly important moment, and it opened up my work tremendously.

I often photograph something as if the subject matter was realistic, but it is actually a fantasy.

I like friendship.

When I was a child, I always went to my grandmother's house in Nuremberg for Christmas. My uncle would leave the room, saying he needed the toilet, and then he would reappear dressed as Santa Claus. I was really scared - I'd have to go and hide behind an armchair.

I don't really like being controlled by anyone.

I always work with two cameras. Its kind of like I'm hypnotizing the subject with the flashing. It's a bombardment of action, flashes, and I think it helps them to ease into the process.

I couldn't identify with the images in 'Elle' or 'Vogue' or 'Harper's Bazaar.' Nobody in the world we're walking around in actually looks like that.

Quite frankly, if I didn't enjoy the fashion industry, then I wouldn't continue to do it.

My childhood was very beautiful in some ways and very disturbing in others.

I think the range of my life shows in my work.