Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A camera gives you a purpose.
A lot of artists need structure.
The camera gives you some control.
I was voted most artistic in school.
I'm not going to hide behind anything.
All I do is make photos. It's my life.
I'm just a photographer, not a movie star.
When I moved to New York, I was still in the closet.
I couldn't wait to come to New York to reinvent myself.
I've been attracted to Kate Moss since I was a teenager.
I didn't have much of a life in crime as a graffiti writer.
I was pretty Irish Catholic Jersey, the middle of the line.
I was never raised with anybody telling me that gay was bad.
I have absolutely no interest in creating depressing images.
I didn't have to be friends with people who were into pop music.
What I really believe is that there are no coincidences anymore.
I'm interested in reaching the masses with my work. It's one of my goals.
I was never told, "Fags are going to hell." You just didn't talk about it.
You find the people that you need to find. There's this gravitational pull.
A lot of my close friends have committed suicide or died of heroin overdoses.
Growing up, my room was covered in posters. I was like, "I want to make posters."
The cool thing for me about moving to New York was that I got to create a new family.
I'm always interested in an atmosphere where dreams and reality mingle on equal terms.
I just remember how excited I was to have a boyfriend and be in love and to document it.
I put all of my time into art because I couldn't go back to Jersey and work at Starbucks.
It's weird being a photographer because you really have to divorce yourself from the image.
The cool part about New York is that you can do that. You can talk to all the people you admire.
I think a lot about control nowadays, and I really want to let go and just be more in the moment.
I'm going to put every aspect of myself out into the world and try to convey it through photography.
Everyone started to have a camera. That's when I started to travel outside of New York and go into nature.
I think the driving force when I moved to New York was the fear of going home with my tail between my legs.
From 8 to 19, I was skateboarding every single day. That was my life. I worked at a skate shop. I watched skate videos.
I knew my ticket out of the suburbs was art school, so I worked really hard to develop my portfolio and get a scholarship.
There was no luxury. I never got on an airplane until I was 18. We drove everywhere. My dad was like, "Waste not, want not."
I went through a pretty big David Bowie period when I was younger, and that has affected me profoundly in my life and my work.
I'm making the art for me first. I'm making it because these are the pictures I want to see. I'm making pictures that don't yet exist.
A lot of people, even my parents, thought, "Art school, I don't know. We'll support you but the success rate for artists is really slim."
Everyone I'm photographing, I feel like I'm remaking a family, in a way. My brothers and sisters are my heroes. So many of my models resemble them.
Whatever emotions you're going through, you somehow seek out the people that are going through similar emotions or that maybe have something you need.
I was growing up in the suburbs; I was one of eight kids. So I did have a community when I was younger, but all of my brothers and sisters were older.
I don't want to be an artist that gets stuck doing one thing. I don't want to be an artist who people look back at and say, 'His early work was really great.
I don't want to be an artist that gets stuck doing one thing. I don't want to be an artist who people look back at and say, 'His early work was really great.'
The thing about being a photographer that's so cool is that you get to participate, but you also get to disappear. The camera is in front of your face all the time.
I know that my mind is so A.D.D., and I want instant gratification - and photography can provide me with that - but at some point, I want to make an independent feature.
My photographs are a celebration of life, fun and the beautiful. They are a world that doesn't exist. A fantasy. Freedom is real. There are no rules. The life I wish I was living.
Actually, I didn't study photography at first. I went to school for painting my first year, poetry my second year, graphic design my third and fourth year, and photography my fifth.
I spent all of my money on film. I remember I would do these set-design jobs or transcribe or just anything to get, like, a $100 check and go immediately to Adorama and buy expired film.
Just being friends with people now for over 15 years, you realize what we all came out of. What we came out of was the intense feeling of growing up. It sounds kind of cliché, but it's true.
In a lot of ways I look at these old photos, and I don't know if I would have been able to communicate with these people on this level if I didn't have a camera. I think I would still be so shy.
I can work with shyness, but for the most part I want people to feel comfortable with me. It's really more about the photographer feeing comfortable right when they walk in that makes the subject feel comfortable.