I worked as a model for nearly a decade and was frustrated with the superficial images constantly created of me. I began taking self-portraits during that time as a way to create images of how I actually saw myself. I wanted to create authentic, honest, raw images, and shooting on film and not retouching my photos was the best way for me to do that.

I feel my means of expression, photography, found me, rather than me finding it. I studied painting and sculpture as a student, and coming out of school, I mostly did box art, collage and watercolor. It was only after a lifetime of working with other forms of art, as well as coming through the humbling experience of selling antique Chinese, African and Tibetan art, that I slowly ventured into photography.

I think it was out of boredom. I felt I was wasting time every day at a job that I didn’t like at all. It happened to be next to a Nikon store, so I just bought a digital camera and started learning. I had no idea at the time that I was making such an important decision. It actually defined my life.

The alteration of the scenes is the culmination of a couple of years of practical experimentation in my work, and ultimately the developing philosophy behind it. I think personal expression, or lack of, is a defining and important feature in all art forms. I’ve grown to accept the tendency I have to present a part of myself in my work.

After dedicating the first part of my life to music, I became interested in photography, I studied photography at the ‘c.f.p. Riccardo Bauer’ in Milan. I graduated in 2000. I think photography chose me.

Photography is a very good way for me to meet people and learn from them. Not from a desk, but in real life. I can meet people I would never have met without photography. This has led to an incredible number of great encounters.

Photography was always in the mix too. I began photographing when I was a teenager with my aunt’s Pentax K1000. My aunt, Susan, went to art school and she had a darkroom in our family home. Photography kind of just stuck with me from there.

I always have loved art; it was a matter of finding something to express myself where words were insufficient. I enjoy painting but I find my painting childish. Writing also interested me but I never found a way with words. It therefore felt natural to choose photography since it can express much more than words, for me in any case.

Through comic strips. They made an impression on me at a young age. Drawing followed on naturally after that. Then comic strips again.

I was introduced to this means of expression later in life during a long period of convalescence. I had never really had an opportunity to get into photography; it was an art that I observed from a distance. I made the most of my time convalescing to get to grips with photography on my own by reading books and to practice, mainly through self-portraits.

I studied graphic design at college and took photography classes, but they were commercially oriented. Then I started an MFA programme in painting and decided to use my photography education through the perspective of fine art.

I have always been interested in visual arts spanning from painting to conceptual art. At the age of 27 I took up photography and I never stopped.