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It seems like there was kind of a radical turn in your artwork around the early 2000s. All of a sudden, you were all over your own photos and you were often naked. And not just naked, but like NAKED… Naked at your father’s grave, naked taking a shit in a snowy forest, and so on. These photos are pretty ballsy and people thought they were all kinds of things: Brave, funny…

Stupid!

Yes, stupid too. Why did you start making these photos?

I got mentally—and maybe also physically—tired of photographing all these people, whether it was models or actors or musicians. It’s quite draining to get involved in their psyches and work with them. I just thought, “Fucking hell, I can’t do it anymore. I should just photograph myself.”

Simple as that.

Yes. I think I also wanted to feel what it’s like to be photographed—to look at myself the way I’d looked at other people. So I worked myself really hard.

What is it about taking someone’s portrait that’s draining?

You need to listen to them and analyze them and deal with each person. It can be done in a very short time or it can take a long time, but it’s really quite draining to be involved with another human being and to get things out of them. It’s also hard when there’s vanity involved or when the photograph is really just going to be used to promote their product, like a film or a record.

Right, like a portrait for a magazine of a new band or a young actor…

And they just want to look young and airbrushed. It’s not about how they might really look. That can be the most draining thing. But I more or less gave that up.

You’re at a level where you can choose and reject assignments with no problem.

Now, when people ask to have their portrait done by me, they pretty much know what they’re running into. But if it’s a certain type of Hollywood actress asking me to photograph them, I say no. Or they know not to ask me anymore.

Maybe my favorite portrait you’ve taken is that one of Yves Saint Laurent where he looks really demonic.

He’s very fragile looking though. I did a campaign for them ten years ago or so when he was still involved in the company, and I still work for them.

You must get offered a scary amount of commercial and editorial work.

A lot, yeah. Most of it I turn down. Sometimes there is something interesting in an offer, and then I might take it. Like I did Patti Smith for the Observer, and I’m traveling to L.A. soon to photograph David Lynch. I’m quite keen to do that.

That’s a good one.

Yeah. So I don’t really see it as commercial work when I do commercial work. I see it more like… Let’s say somebody wants to do an independent film, right? They have to cast actresses and choose locations and all that. So I’m just using this stuff to create my own fantasies and dreams.

As if it were a movie you were putting together.

Like, for the new Marc Jacobs campaigns, I used William Eggleston. He’s in his late 60s and he’s a friend of mine. He’s such a stylish man. I wanted to photograph him for these ads as much as I just wanted to hang out with him. And he wanted to meet the actress Charlotte Rampling, who was already in the ads I’d been shooting, so we all got together in Paris and she ended up being in the pictures too. So that’s what I want to do. I just want to have a nice time, an interesting time.

The new women’s campaign is starring…

Dakota Fanning.

What a crazy choice.

She was Marc’s choice. I thought it was a really good idea. They had to shrink the clothes down to fit her.

When you’re hired by Marc Jacobs to do a campaign, how does the creative process work?

There are always a couple of people we’re thinking about who we’d like to use as models. I had wanted to use Charlotte, for example, for quite a while because I know her quite well.


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