By the time I get to my studio, my staff are already there. I have a manager, an assistant manager, two assistants and two trainees, which is quite a lot for one photographer. If we're doing a casting I can see 150 other people. Let's say I'm looking for a chubby middle-aged man for one ad and an Asian girl for another. All day, it can be chubby man, chubby man, chubby man, Asian girl, Asian girl. I can look at 150 different faces to find the right one.

If we're doing a shoot, there will also be a make-up artist, the art director, the stylist with her rack of clothes and a set designer with his crew. Then there's the client, who is usually a little man, if you know what I mean.

The wonderful thing about the actual studio area, which is about 15 metres by 15 metres, is that it becomes a totally different world whenever I have a new project. Today, it can be a Japanese office interior for a computer ad. Tomorrow, it can be the inside of an airplane. After that, it can be a park, with a poor man standing outside in the rain having a cigarette. I did that one for Nicorette. It's magic.

For an hour, if we are lucky, the art director discusses the project with the client. Meanwhile, my assistants and I do the lighting, because photography is all about lighting. That's where the magic is. If you want an old New York City loft flooded with sunlight - a sunny happy world where everyone loves their new Microsoft programmes - we can do that by using 20 lamps at once, even if it's dark and raining outside.

Once the model, the clothes, the set and the lights are done, we start to shoot. And then the art director says, 'Can we move the model's hand over one centimetre?' and the client says, 'Maybe we should move the model's hand back.' Meanwhile, I'm trying to convince this girl, who might just be a girl off the street who happens to have a beautiful face and a beautiful body, to act like a professional model.

I sometimes have lunch in the studio, where we have a kitchen that an artist friend of mine painted entirely in skin colour, with eyes, noses and mouths everywhere. Some people find it strange to eat in there, but I think it's cosy.

I work nine or 10 hours a day on average. After long days like that, I drop by my neighbourhood Indian restaurant, lie on the couch and maybe call a friend.

When I was much younger, I was very much into Amsterdam's gay scene. When I was 19, I went out every night. When I was in my 20s, I went down to five nights a week. In my 30s, three nights a week. Now that I've bought this loft I just want to stay at home and eat with other people. I have a big, beautiful kitchen and long table that can seat 10. I like having dinner parties because it's fun making up different combinations of people who don't know each other, to see what happens.

I enjoy living alone. I had a 23-year relationship and we lived apart. We called it 'living alone together' and it worked. It's easier to love someone when you don't have to listen to their hip-hop music all the time - boom, boom, boom. Me, I like mellow house music with female voices, music that has soul.

The ideas for my own art always come when I am alone - walking the streets, lying on the couch, riding my bike. For example, the idea for my 'Separation' series: I was sitting on the couch by myself and suddenly remembered what my mother said after my father had died a few years ago. She said, 'I am sitting on the couch alone at home. But all I want is to go home. Even though I am home. I don't feel it.' It was such a touching, lonely thing to say.

Then I remembered a story a friend told me many years ago. He had worked in a rubber factory. One day, he got an order from the US of a man who wanted a body suit made entirely out of rubber. And he said, 'That's too much. I'm quitting.' And then the two ideas came together. What better symbol for loneliness than a full rubber body suit? It means you can't touch anyone else's skin and nobody can touch you. You have totally sealed yourself off. So I did this series in which some of the images look like a small boy dressed in black vinyl gear. It's not a real young boy, of course. I bought some mannequins, the kind a department store would use to display children's clothing, dressed them up, scanned them, and manipulated the images. I wanted to capture the loneliness, the sense of separation

a small boy might feel on a playground. Other children can be so cruel.

Some people might not understand my art and say it's obscene, but I don't need to explain myself. I don't need to put a giant banner in front of the gallery saying, 'Actually, I am not a violent person. I am not just interested in naked men. It's a symbol. I am for peace and love.'

A retrospective of 20 years of photography by Erwin Olaf

is at Art Statements Gallery in Central until March 27.

His more explicit pieces can be seen at Club 97 in Lan Kwai Fong.