Smiles come naturally to me but I started thinking of them as an art form at my command. I studied all the time. I looked at magazines I'd practice in front of the mirror and I'd ask photographers about the best angles. I can now pull out a smile at will.

Becoming emancipated at 14 my life wasn't normal. I didn't have to go to school so I didn't. I was rebellious by nature. I spent my 20s focusing on my company Flower Films and producing movies. Now that I'm almost 30 I would like to try other things in lie. I'm crazy about photography and I want to take an art history class.

A saboteur in the house of art and a comedienne in the house of art theory Lawler has spent three decades documenting the secret life of art. Functioning as a kind of one-woman CSI unit she has photographed pictures and objects in collectors' homes in galleries on the walls of auction houses and off the walls in museum storage.

Appropriation is the idea that ate the art world. Go to any Chelsea gallery or international biennial and you'll find it. It's there in paintings of photographs photographs of advertising sculpture with ready-made objects videos using already-existing film.

The greatest work of art about New York? The question seems nebulous. The city's magic and majesty are distilled in the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand.

Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for upsized art and more of it. I've heard of photographers asked to print larger to increase the wall power and salability of their work. Everything winds up set to maximum in order to feed the beast.

People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.

To me photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.