Quotes from Juergen Teller

I find it quite fascinating to see how the body works.

I like physical exercise. I cycle, run, and play tennis and football with my son.

I'm interested in extrovert characters, people who are doing something. But I used to only be able to photograph people I was interested in or attracted to, either psychologically or physically. That all changed when I did the 'Go Sees.'

I always work with two cameras. Its kind of like I'm hypnotizing the subject with the flashing. It's a bombardment of action, flashes, and I think it helps them to ease into the process.

I like friendship.

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.

Quite frankly, if I didn't enjoy the fashion industry, then I wouldn't continue to do it.

I think the range of my life shows in my work.

I like the idea that things can exist in different formats - in a gallery, a fashion ad, in books.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I see through my eyes; the camera is just a machine to record it for me.

My father and one of my grandfathers died very early, and female figures have been an influential part of my life.

I think my moral ground is very much intact.

In Germany, the body is treated rather differently than in the U.K. or U.S. I grew up with a swimming pool in our garden and a sauna in our basement.

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've never really understood tattoos. I mean, it's your body - why would you wanna scar it? I don't mind other people's tattoos, but I just never got it.

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

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

When I was a child, I always went to my grandmother's house in Nuremberg for Christmas. My uncle would leave the room, saying he needed the toilet, and then he would reappear dressed as Santa Claus. I was really scared - I'd have to go and hide behind an armchair.

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 would never ask somebody to do something where I felt that it's not right or it puts someone in an uncomfortable position.