I had to work to put myself through school, so I always worked in the heaviest industries I could find because that's who paid the best.
I remember the first roll of film I took. It was wintertime, and I wanted to shoot a roll of film to practice processing it, so I took an entire 36-exposure roll of my dog, Tippy.
My father was an amateur oil painter, so some of his oil paintings were on our walls. There was one above the piano of a famous Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, playing an instrument known as a bandura. I remember that one kind of resonated with me; it was always central in the living room.
Somebody referred to what I do as subliminal activism, which I like.
Digital photography and Photoshop have made it very easy for people to take pictures. It's a medium that allows a lot of mediocre stuff to get through.
Berlin has a uniquely haunting nature, symbolic of a problematic system that was created to oppress and divide a nation.
