I'm interested in smokers standing on ledges, and big box stores, the rise of the suburbs, and the hollowing out of small towns. Self-storage. Things that didn't exist 50 years ago. Our common culture. What we have agreed is OK to live with.

Teaching has never been far from my life. It's the most natural thing I do. Apparently, as I said, I cannot not do it.

My father taught me photography. It was his hobby, and we had a small darkroom in the fruit cellar of our basement. It was the kind of makeshift darkroom that was only dark at night.

The longer we lived with it the more we wanted something less about process and more about life.

I now want to be a photographer of my time, and our common culture.

I'm very involved in photographing America now, so I don't think of faraway places, as I did when I was young.

The unusual wins out over the usual.