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Whatever it is that you want, any kind of dish or meal you’re craving, it is available and you can find it. So that is sort of the inspiration for “Hunger Pains.” I was thinking about food and people and the relationship between the two.
     I had done a series called “Evolution,” which was with people that sort of looked like fish. That series I did at a time a few years back when Creationism was big in the news, and I got the idea to show, okay, is it really hard to believe that millions of years ago we came out of the ocean? I found some fish that I thought would make interesting people and then cast to find people that looked as close to the fish as possible. So that had sort of sparked my interest with food and people and also graphically how those looked together.

And what you’ll also find in a city like New York is a fair amount of conspicuous consumption. What do these photographs have to say about the culture of food production and the waste that we see all around us?
Well, it’s been interesting because in the online community there have been a lot of people talking from two sides. First of all, it’s beautiful, it’s art, there’s a statement being made. And then there’s the other camp where people have commented about it being a terrible waste of food – think of all of all of the people who could have been fed. So there have been those two warring camps going back and forth. But the way we looked at it is that if you make a sculpture out of wood, there was a tree cut down. I didn’t see it as wasting food. And we actually kept as much as we could and gave away as much as we could.
     The whole notion about food and how much food goes to waste was sort of an idea too – the permanence of clothing and the difference between having a meal and when it’s done it’s done and also saying, ‘Here’s a way of showing something that can last forever – an image.’