I have a long-standing interest in photographing American culture as it changes. Doing so has helped make me a photographer of my time. This was especially important as my career took me overseas often where I worked on themes that were set in times past.
I am also interested in living up to the example of photographers I admired whose work was about America. Foremost among these is Dorothea Lange whose slender book I encountered as a student in 1965. The book showcases her work but it also strongly implies the life she lived. Her’s was a body of work I aspired to live up to.
The book was published by the Museum of Modern Art, a place I visited in 1967 to see her original prints. There I encountered the curator Peter Bunnell who took time to speak with me about photography. At the end of our conversation he saw me off with a copy of the book American Photographs by Walker Evans. He didn’t say ‘live up to this’. But that is what I am trying to do.