Photographer Jeff Wall's best shot

I had no real subject in mind when I started work on this picture. I was simply interested in a problem I had noticed in my interior shots: they often felt really closed in. So I decided to find an interior with an exterior.

First, I had to find a place to shoot. My house wasn't right, as it looks out on the ocean, so I went searching for a place with a view, and found an apartment with a lovely vista of Vancouver harbour. The port is fascinating, a constantly changing place, with all those ships coming in and out. It's full of life.

I asked the person on the left, a woman I knew, to behave as if it were her own apartment. I gave her a budget to furnish it in an appropriate way for who I imagined she was, and then left her to live in it as if it were her own. This took quite a while, since each person's interior is such a collage of accidents, plans, things you've collected. I didn't want to design it in any way, although I did want the trees to be bare. This meant waiting for winter. All in all, the setting-up phase took the best part of a year.

Neither of the women are holding a pose. They are just doing what they were doing. The "walker" is ironing. It's late afternoon. I assume her friend has come over and they are having some tea, looking at magazines and talking. It could be a weekend. The "friend" didn't even know she was being photographed.

I had done a lot of improvisation in advance, watching them do the sort of things such women might actually do. I had the one on the left video herself when I wasn't around, so I wouldn't miss moments that might turn out to be beautiful: walking past a window having a cigarette, that sort of thing. I was just waiting for something to strike me.

I reject the idea I'm doing "staged photography". Every kind of behaviour is equally real. Technically, the woman on the left is performing, but I don't think it has any effect on what she looks like. Yes, she's more directed, in that what she is doing was planned. I just wanted her to be walking away from her ironing, going somewhere. It didn't matter where.

CV

Born: Vancouver, 1946

Studied: MA in fine arts at the University of British Columbia. "Never studied photography or went to art school."

Influences: "Just the best ones."

Dream subject: "The next one."

Top tip: "Try not to resist admiring the best artists."

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaJmiqa6vsMOeqqKfnmR%2FcX2PaKSasV9lgnC8x6irqJ%2Bilr2pxYyjnJ%2BeXayurbiMm5ysrF2otbDA