Washington, D.C. in 1942 was not the easiest place in the world for a Negro to get along.

I bought my first camera in Seattle, Washington. Only paid about seven dollars and fifty cents for it.

I had known poverty firsthand, but there I learned how to fight its evil - along with the evil of racism - with a camera.

But I do feel a little teeny right now that I'm just about ready to start, and winter is entering. Half past autumn has arrived.

I was there less than a year before I was assigned to the Paris bureau. I spent two years there and, in fact, before I even went on the staff I was sent to Europe to do assignments which they wouldn't normally do for a young photographer just starting out.

Many times I wondered whether my achievement was worth the loneliness I experienced, but now I realize the price was small.

And now, I feel at 85, I really feel that I'm just ready to start.