MARIO TESTINO

A lot of fashion photographers will do the same sort of image for many years; it's easier to be successful if you do that.

England gave me a chance. It's a very individual country where people have a personal style; they don't all follow a trend. The subtlety and wit of England is incredible, and they are very creative.

I started being a photographer because I liked fashion. I liked the idea of dressing up and changing my look. I got earrings, dyed my hair. I would dress like a fashion photo.

In the South America of the forties and fifties, everyone was into beauty and glamour and fashion.

There's a particular style that is very Peru that you don't see anywhere else; it's got so many different imprints. When you mix Incan minimalism with the heavy, ornate Spanish Baroque, it is very interesting.

A photograph can make you feel so many different things. When you look at war photographs of Vietnam, or something similar, it makes you feel anguish and sadness and pain. Then in other moments, when you look at Jackie Kennedy walking down Fifth Avenue, that makes you feel glory and richness.

It's a choice - there are two different sorts of photographer: those obsessed with the technicalities and those obsessed by the subject.

My favourite subjects at school were algebra and logic: making a big problem into something small.

When you're nice, people like you and will want to work with you. But it can mean that they take you for granted.

At the end of the '90s, I was very bored with the usual models, so I discovered a new generation that impressed me with their fresh look. I still keep working with models like Gisele Bundchen and Kate Moss, and I am still looking for new, interesting faces. Life is about discovery, and you should never stop searching.

Some things happen by accident - embrace them.

I adore being able to go to the Oscars and know every single person at the party afterwards.

My pictures are my eyes. I photograph what I see - and what I want to see.

I've been criticised for pretty, smiley photographs, but at least someone is happy! In my mind, I am always giving the image to the sitter.

Fine artists reflect, and then they act. Fashion photographers - we act, and then we reflect.

Ultimately, I made my range wider because I wanted to suit each publication that I worked for. Talk about reinvention - I'm like the Madonna of photography.

Some of my friends say that I only talk about myself. But it is funny: my house is covered in art but with nothing of my own, and when I'm working, I'm only thinking about what the client wants. So I don't see it that way, but maybe it's true. I mean, they are my friends.

I have become aware on my travels that when a country loses the connection between its history and its traditional dress, something truly precious is lost.

I am trying to capture the women I photograph at their happiest. That is when they look their most beautiful. But I do understand that you have to make somebody feel completely comfortable in order to bring that out.

A fashion photographer is nothing without clothes and hair and makeup. And when I speak to other photographers, a lot of them can't reference a picture by the designer. Me, I say, 'The Balenciaga.' And I go to the shows. I feel like it's my business.

I find that my entire life has come to me, and things happened without me planning them. You know, I never asked to photograph Princess Diana, and that made me more famous than I wanted. I never asked to photograph Madonna, and that pushed me to another level. There are things that just take you into the limelight.

When I see Kate Moss out and about, I think she looks more beautiful than when her hairdresser and make-up artist try and make her look like something else. And I remember when Madonna first asked Versace to book me to shoot a campaign with her, she came to see me wearing hardly any make-up, and she looked incredible.

At the beginning of my career, as a boy from Peru in London, suddenly discovering British culture and society, I looked so much at the work of the photographers Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson, which seemed to represent a wonderful vanished grandeur of my new country.

However spontaneous I hope a photograph will look, I always put a lot of thought into how I can make it happen. The very best pictures are the most relaxed, so a lot of fussing around technically can completely break the spell, and everyone freezes up with nerves.

I'm really in no one city more than two months during the year. I'm constantly having to readapt my eye to new locations.