I’m interested in the history of subculture. How a subculture comes to be, but also, how the aesthetics of a subculture develop and take shape. What came first, the mohawk or punk? The tattoo or the rebel? When I started considering these timelines, I also started daydreaming about what it would be like to develop my own kind of subculture. I considered how the history of subculture was such a new and in flux study, and didn’t see why I couldn’t start my own based on the principles of an ideology.
At that point, I started approaching people who I felt embodied these principles. People who weren’t afraid of their bodies, who were comfortable altering their body hair, and who could make a very private space public. I wasn’t looking for anything sexy. I’m interested in depicting the body in a benign and honest way.. 

The opportunity to show these photos in Russia came by way of email. I opened a message from a very nice curator there who had seen some of my photos and asked me if I wanted to do a show. I said yes because I loved how unique the opportunity was – to do something that couldn’t have been done twenty or thirty years ago. Russia hasn’t really been this accessible until recently.

I started photographing the body because I was looking for a canvas of my own, where I could experiment and start to understand what it is that I have to say. I was interested in the way body hair is something that is seen but not looked at, not examined –at least, not in a non-sexual way. Things that are seen but not looked at, like flags and signs, are canvases for exploring how images are made. The eye encounters them so often that when you see a flag or a sign in a photograph, your focus is less so on it and more so on the way it’s being displayed. Body hair, to me, was a venue for exploring the types of images I wanted to make.

I was just using the things around me for my material. Fur and fire fascinate me. They’re nice, however, they are displayed. I approve of how everybody accessorizes in that way. I accept it. I just watch and observe, and make photos along the way.

I just brought dye and bleach everywhere with me. I remember being in Berlin with friends, bringing a carry-on bag and stuffing my box of bleach and bottle of dye in the bag along the way. I was that kid at the party with a camera and some materials looking around at everybody like, ‘who’s ready?’

Petra and I both spent time working with Ryan McGinley. I’m not saying this to drop names but to say that there’s a context to everything. Right around the time I started making my body series was when I stopped working at Ryan’s. At his studio, I had been flipping through books of nude photos every day and I loved it. But I thought it was time I started contributing. My photos are largely a call-and-response mechanism. I looked at Ryan’s photos, read about censorship and the body-image movement, and just started responding. 

I don’t like the word confrontational. Does anything confrontational make you happy? Moving forward, I want to make work that makes you happy. I like the way a photograph can make you smile or just laugh sometimes. Happy work is the work I want to try and make.