Eden and After

"They're both malleable and they reinvent themselves a lot," she says.

 "To me, queens are the bravest people on earth. With children, society starts destroying them quickly, but before they're four or five they have their own worlds. I have this idea that children come from another planet; they remember that place at first then they forget it. This book shows children as autonomous beings; it's not about children as invented by adults, not about behaving in ways that were prescribed to them. It's a narrative book, almost like sci-fi or a Grimm's fairy tale."

Ava twirling, NYC, 2007

First step on the Planet

"The world has become so horrible," she says. "I've lost my medium. I'm no longer able to make slide shows, everything's scanned - it's digital. I don't understand what the fuck that is. People have more control over my work than I do. They go on the computer and do all this stuff and I don't know how to do it. It would be like being a Renaissance painter and not having any oil paints. The world is so oversaturated and everyone has an attention span of less than a second. It's not the world I thought would happen."

"When I take a really good picture, it's like a high - this moment of euphoria. But the best of my work is about empathy, trying to feel what it is to be in another person's body; to break that glass. I don't think any of us understand the other person well enough. Or maybe that's just me. I'd always like to know what it is to be inside other people.

Elio at dusk, NYC 2007

Nan Goldin

Interview here: http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2014/03/31/nan-goldin-interview---eden--after-photography-book