I started out as an assistant portrait photographer and I liked that job. When the contract ended there was this job opportunity in advertising. The pay was good but I never really got used to the art directors and the marketing people who without exception seemed to think of themselves as godlike creatures.
So, I quit and started working for a Dutch weekly in 1977. One of my first assignments was to photograph heroin hookers working in the vicinity of Rembrandt Square.
I was very young and inexperienced, so I really had a hard time approaching heroin prostitutes on the street to ask them to pose for me. One of them finally gave in on the condition I would score some heroin for her. I was so shy that once we got to work I photographed her in the mirror while she was doing her make-up.
