There were no black images of dignity, no images of beautiful black people. There was this big hole. I tried to fill it.

But if it's true it's beautiful. Truth is beautiful. And so my whole work is about what amounts to a reverence for life itself.

You should be able to look at me and see my work. You should be able to look at my work and see me.

There were no black images of dignity, no images of beautiful black people. There was this big hole. I tried to fill it.

My photographs are subjective and personal-they’r e intended to be accessible, to relate to people’s lives... People-their well-being and survival-are the crux of what’s important to me.

A photograph is a photograph, a picture, an image, an illusion complete within itself, depending neither on words, reproductive processes or anything else for its life, its reason for being.

It's the not the subject that interests me as much as my perception of the subject.