I think there’s something about the local landscape and mythology, as well as perhaps slight inclination to melancholy by Czech people. In my work, I look for a type of beauty that comes from intense emotions that are not necessarily related to happiness.

I like the contrast between cold and precise technology with something deeply personal and poetic.

I get inspiration from literature or music quite a lot. When I read or hear something good, it often entices me to respond to it visually and then I look for ways to make it work as photographic series.

I used to write poetry when I was younger, nothing good, but as I said, literature is a big influence. For the past few years, I’ve been trying to write little introductions for my works, which are basically prose poems packed with references to what has inspired the particular photographs. I would like to write more but I don’t know whether I have the disposition for that kind of form of expression. Maybe it’s something that is slowly growing on me and the time hasn’t come yet.

I like a lot of early 20th-century photography by artists like Alfred Stieglitz, Josef Sudek, Germaine Krull and Edward Weston. But I really love weird photographs like spiritist photography, or old science and vernacular images.

I was eight months pregnant and it was like forty degrees outside. The town near the castle is fairly ugly and you have to climb a hill to get there so it was quite exhausting. It was everything but romantic. But when I got back to the town, I was having pizza in pretty much the only restaurant there, and suddenly the sky got dark and this strong wind started to blow and I knew that a thunderstorm was coming. I jumped into the car and drove to the castle, which is prohibited, and run to the opposite hill and watched quite amazing lightning and thunder above the castle. I took some photos of that. That was very special.

I went to loads, not only in the Czech Republic. I photographed Capuchin catacombs in Palermo, where mummified bodies of local citizens are displayed. I visited many graveyards, haunted castles, and the usual Gothic locations. I’d really like to visit Externsteine castle in Germany, a sort of prehistoric temple where Kenneth Anger shot some parts of Lucifer Rising. I like locations that are mystical and entice people to confront the spiritual side of existence.

I like them for various reasons, as they all have different stories. But generally, I think they are places where nature, art and people symbolically meet and become intertwined. I like one’s relationship with nature that enhances the beauty of a place through sensitive intervention.

I guess that comes from mysticism and interpretation of female aspect as something associated with the irrational, more sensual approach to existence. Night and the Moon are also associated with the feminine side and there’s certain mystery and allusion to hidden power in women. I don’t want to re-enforce any gender stereotypes through this but I quite like to portray women in this way.

I am fascinated by long hair, be it on women or men. I think it’s this excess of something that is at once symbol of beauty and sensuality but can also become object of repulsion. I like this fine line, as well as the veiling that brings on loss of identity and turns the sitter into someone or something that transcends the personal and becomes universal.

I think death is fascinating because it is unknowable.

I recently finished a small series that’s being shown at The Ravestijn Gallery in Amsterdam and I am also experimenting with some photographic collages.