Is shooting consenting adults a big change from photographing children and animals?
I like working with animals and children because it’s hard to get the innocent emotion with adults. Adults have more hang-ups. The behavior might be more artificial. When animals or children are going to make a face and show an emotion, it’s a deep-down, honest emotion. And then, of course, I make the photograph seem totally dishonest by putting it in an artificial setting. I take them out of their natural environments. How did you decide to shoot these animals in a studio setting? I didn’t even think about it, in a way. That’s what I’ve been doing forever with people. I like that structure where the subject is the star of the picture. The first monkey I shot was an accident. I was doing a job where I had this monkey on set and I shot him on scene just for myself. Then I thought, Oh, this looks like something I’ve never seen before a studio portrait of a monkey. I decided to do more. So the monkey portraits seemed like a natural evolution of your work? Recently, I’ve been thinking abou