I had no visual imagination as a child. I liked playing football. That was it.

In Bavaria, many homes have a cosy room which is all wood and is filled with special things. My grandfather had such a room, and he made the panels on the walls himself; each one told a story.

One day, I'll be photographing Kate Moss in Paris, then I'll be on Stephanie Seymour's ranch with her hundred horses wondering what exactly it is I'm doing there.

My father never really encouraged me or even took an interest after I walked away from the family business. No one did except my mother and my grandfather. To be truthful, I cannot remember one meaningful conversation I had with my father.

I just really like women, and I like men, and I like children, and I like eating, and I like doing everything.

I'm interested in the person I photograph. The world is so beautiful as it is; there's so much going on, which is sort of interesting. It's just so crazy, so why do I have to put some retouching on it? It's just pointless to me.

Back in 2000, I didn't have a mobile phone.

You have a negative, and you can have an influence whether you want to have it more contrasty or less contrasty; you can pre-flash the photo paper. You can make it warmer or colder, lighter, darker. This is all a way of manipulating the image in a normal way, not changing the pixels.

I just want to do everything as good as I possibly can.

I never work with a screen. Other photographers have this black thing around, and they go back and look at it. I'd rather spend the time with the subject, photographing or discussing or talking, than staring at this thing. I'd rather look at what's going on.

When I became a father, all that stuff rose up again from the back of my mind. I suddenly realised how uninvolved my father had been in my life.

Nudity is no big deal as a German. It's all rather normal and boring.

Normally, whenever I try to photograph my mother, she is extremely impatient and will only stand for a minute and insists on knowing exactly what I'm doing.

I often photograph something as if the subject matter was realistic, but it is actually a fantasy.

I'm often in Venice in November and December, when it's foggy and wintry, and the decorations in the shops and the lights in the churches make the place feel both Christmassy and melancholic.

When you're a kid, what you learn in school about being German has a sort of heaviness about it, and you have a sort of guilt with you.

There was a stage in my career when I started to have problems with the vanity aspect of the subject. I got frustrated and bored with it. Then I thought, actually, how does it feel to be photographed? That's when I started to photograph myself. That was an incredibly important moment, and it opened up my work tremendously.

I'm not interested in running around from one shoot to another.

I don't really like being controlled by anyone.

I go, wherever there is my interest, where my heart and feeling take me.

Family is a major part of my life.

I am someone who takes pleasure in exploring the full scale of the medium photography. I am a photographer.

I never really think of anyone as models, even the models.

I want adventure in my life. I want to do things I haven't done before. These Hollywood people are so careful of their image and looking right, but there's a wildness when I come into the photographs. I just want to wade through rivers, climb mountains.

I think my strength is to act instinctively, really quickly, on what I believe, what I see in this person. A proper portrait. I wouldn't dream of doing something inappropriate for that person. I guess I make the person comfortable around me.

I take it very seriously, the photographic craft.

For me, cinema is very important. I grew up with television; then, as a teenager, you discover cinema.

When you have your own kid, it suddenly makes you more aware of how your parents treated you and educated you. Your relationships with your partner, your uncles, your mother all change; you're more conscious of where you came from, of where your roots are. I find that very interesting.

I try and photograph people as they are. I do not want to hide anything. I want to bring across a personality, a humanity. It is not a case of model A or model B against a white background. I am interested in the person.

I like people with conviction, who are in control of themselves. I'm not interested in working with a designer who hires a creative director.

For my 50th birthday, my cousin Helmut gave me the most profound, beautiful, and striking present. He made books out of my dad's slide photographs, which were stored and forgotten. Looking at those books made me cry.