Collapsible Bustle, American, 1880s, The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Bodily Containers
People have talked about museums as mausoleums, and that feeling, when you go into the costume institute of the Met[ropolitan Museum of Art], is the most potent thing about the place. There are fluorescent lights, it's freezing cold, it's very clinical, and yet inside these metal drawers is somebody's corset. And it's not just anybody's corset, the way we buy a size 8, something standardized; it was made for some body. So the costume exhibit is like a morgue in that sense; it is somebody's personal effects. I did feel a certain kind of holiness in the objects in the sense that they were connected to real individuals. Every single object in these volumes, except for those in the contemporary installation, are earlier than 1900—no one who would have ever worn these things could possibly be alive. They become shells of the body that once contained a real, living person. Flesh is mortal, but these were creations of culture that contain the body for various purposes.

Bronze Cuirass, Greek, Mid-4th century BCE, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Wire & Lace
The whole Undergarments and Armor project was all about things that seemed like they were polar extremes, like inside and outside and hard and soft. But every single object in some way challenged that polarity, and even my approach to photographing the objects could somehow challenge it. The delicacy of the adornments on a lot of the breastplates—usually for ceremonial armor—challenged it. The extreme sense of the adornment for war versus the industrial construction of the undergarments. A lot of the bustles from the 1880s are made of wire; they are very industrial. They're not some kind of lacy, Victorian, flaccid underwear thing. They shape the body, the body doesn't shape them.

Medieval Helmet, German, 14th century, Higgins Armory Museum, Worchester, Massachusetts

Personal Connection v. Clinical Distance
One of the most ambitious things in the project was [the attempt to balance the personal connection and the clinical distance] because I was trying to do both at once all the time. Not in every single picture, but there are pictures that are more or less clinical than others. One of my favorite photographs is this really simple photograph of a sleeve support; you would wear it under your dress to make the shoulder on your dress poof out. The photograph has a clinical, stark way of describing the object, yet at the same time it is such an odd object that it looks truly perverse. I think a lot of times when photographers photograph old stuff there's a kind of nostalgia and aura around these old objects, and I wanted to specifically counteract that with a clinical way of framing the objects. For the most part my technique is about finding this very, very precise frame around things.

Wooden Corset, 17th century, The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York

Balancing Art & Motherhood
It is difficult, yet I feel really lucky. I know people who had babies and felt like it would be impossible to continue putting the time, mental space, money [together], and the physical space that it takes to continue being productive, and I think that it was out of some gut sense of my own survival that I never stopped. I always kept things going. But I think, in the last decade, I've had three kids and I've made really, a lot of work. But on the other hand I am not out in New York City going to openings, either, and that affects where you are in your life and career. But building this building was a really big thing. We built this studio two or three years ago, and I am 25 yards from my house, so when my baby is napping I can come here, and I have an intercom. I can come here at night. It really enriches my family life. My two older children (Abby is six and Eve is nine) come in here and they do photography projects while I am working. But it's totally exhausting at the same time.

Manequin, The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Trees
After 12 years of being focused almost entirely on things related to the body, I somehow started photographing trees. I photograph them the same way I photograph bodies in this very iconic way, centered like portraits. I never expected that this would turn into an extensive series. I was in this strange, empty spot at the end of a big ambitious project and I really wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. For me, I always need to be working on something. When I go to Simon's Rock, I drive through all these orchards. I was really moved by the trees that would hold their fruit even into the winter—they would hold these little shriveled-up fruits on their bare branches. And I couldn't help notice that some of the orchards were for sale. They were going to be bulldozed and developed. The project is called Fruitless. It has been weirdly challenging because the subject itself is so beautiful and is unlike anything I have done. I don't normally point my camera at something which could be considered so decorative and beautiful.

Corset with Hip Pads, late 18th century, The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Photographing the Enlightenment
I want to do a project that I have been calling Wax Bodies, photographing 18th-century wax anatomical models in Italy.  It's about sculpture and the body. It is about science and a scientific way of seeing the body, both clinical and romantic. The models are painstakingly made by taking wax casts of real cadavers. They were made for medical schools, and for public viewings, not unlike the current exhibition "The Body." The men just look like cadavers, but the wax women are lying on their backs, nude, not skinned; they are beautiful, they have hair, pearl necklaces, carefully sculpted toes. And then you can take their bodies apart, and you can go down one layer at a time. I am interested in a theoretical way of photographing the models. It is so much about an enlightenment idea: knowing the subject; seeing and knowing it. It is very sexual, too; the women are passive erotic forms that you can look into, master, and take their bodies apart.