I grew up in Harlem, but I moved to the Lower East Side when I was a teenager and it was ... I feel like when I try to describe it, it doesn't sound believable. It just sounds like you're lying. And I see it on the faces of my younger friends.

I've been taking pictures since I was probably 16. I'm 54, and I can't believe how excited I am.

What attracts me in photography is not so much a fine arts approach, but rather photographs as documents... All the ways in which human beings have documented the world in an attempt to order it, in an attempt to consume it or rule it or hang on to it in some sense.

I like getting stuff out of the way so you can see something clearly, see it sharply, have it be new again.

I choose to work behind the camera. And I kind of want to make the work and then run away. The presentation of myself really feels complicated for me.

What I've always liked about photography is that it's such a direct way of showing what's on my mind. I see something. I show it to you.

I'm always learning. I can't imagine doing anything else.