My favorite pictures have always been complex ones, pictures which ask questions and pose problems but leave the answers and solutions to the viewers. These are images with a long and evolving life, in which the photograph may transcend the subject and become the subject. Central to the strength of these images is photography's most precious and unique quality, believability: that the moment preserved on paper is true and unaltered, that it really happened and will never happen again.
In my search for photographs I have come to realize that the best pictures are surprises, images I subconsciously seek but do not recognize until they suddenly appear. These are thrilling moments in a kind of photography that can be frustrating and unpredictable, with the picture often spoiled by something so minor as the momentary glance of a subject at the camera. In approaching people I prefer to be the observer rather than the observed and value the human presence, even a human shadow, as the most important element in my pictures.
The flow of people in a setting, their changing relationships to each other and their environment, and their constantly changing expressions and movements all provide the photographer with unlimited choices of when to push the button. By choosing a precise intersection between the subject and the moment, he may transform the ordinary into the extraordinary and the real into the surreal.
