I remember the first roll of film I took. It was wintertime, and I wanted to shoot a roll of film to practice processing it, so I took an entire 36-exposure roll of my dog, Tippy.

My father was an amateur oil painter, so some of his oil paintings were on our walls. There was one above the piano of a famous Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, playing an instrument known as a bandura. I remember that one kind of resonated with me; it was always central in the living room.

Digital photography and Photoshop have made it very easy for people to take pictures. It's a medium that allows a lot of mediocre stuff to get through.

Berlin has a uniquely haunting nature, symbolic of a problematic system that was created to oppress and divide a nation.

I can go into the wilderness and not see anyone for days and experience a kind of space that hasn't changed for tens of thousands of years. Having that experience was necessary to my perception of how photography can look at the changes humanity has brought about in the landscape. My work does become a kind of lament.