Dana Lixenberg's personal, political and pared-down portraits

Her photographs of celebrated personalities, from Toni Morrison to Tupac Shakur, have become iconic images. Dana Lixenberg tells us about three decades of providing her unique perspective on the United States and the evolution of a society she first started documenting in the 1990s. As her major, monographic exhibition "American Images" opens at the Maison Européenne de la Photo in Paris, the Dutch photographer tells us about being surprised by the enduring success of her beautiful black-and-white image of Tupac, how a small community in South Central LA crystallised her love of image-making and why artifice in photography is all right in very small doses.