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Not for models. SuicideGirls is a mystery to me because I thought only women ran the site.
The first time I heard of suicidegirls was when a model from there contacted me to see if I wanted to do a shoot. I can't remember what happened with that but we didn't end up doing it.
It's like a visual connection between the girl I'm shooting and me, a bunch of triggers. A lot of girls I'll just shoot once or twice, but with certain special ones I'll go a bit further.
What bothers people more than anything is that I'm an old guy taking photos of them. But maybe if you look at the photos, 20, 30 years later, it's not going to matter who took the photos. I mean, they would just be there. People will hopefully get over that.
A lot of the point mags are going out of business. They dropped the pay tremendously and it's all because of the internet. I used to go out once a month to LA and shoot for one week. I'd make a ton of money then come back to New York and do whatever I wanted.
Then I became aware of the site as the traffic for it became higher. The most recent contact was this girl Lily. She wanted me to shoot her for the site and she actually showed up. There a lot of people who contact me to do a shoot for a website then you never hear from them.
I think a lot of times photo sessions is just a test, maybe, for models. Sometimes it's for money. I'm going to shoot a girl in a couple weeks in Italy who has been writing me for a couple years. She sends photos all the time and it's kind of like a game. A lot of times people write and then they just want to see if I'm interested. If I say I am, I never hear from them again.
One of the elements of photography is, just by nature, journalistic. It's some kind of documentation. The most successful pictures to me are with an interesting looking girl. They're not being provocative. They're just presenting their drugs to you, showing you what they take. There's a good-looking girl, but here's this thing about her that's not so cool. It makes you feel a little uneasy.
The model is just one element of the photograph. There's also the location, the light - all that junk. It helps if the girl is really good-looking, but a girl can be not super good-looking and it'd still be a really good photograph. I ask people to send some photos of where they live if that's where I'm shooting. I go for shabby places over too-nice places, because most of these girls are going to look better if they're not made to look rich.