I don’t want to make portraits that degrade or glorify anyone. I’ve done portraits for many years. Some indoors, some outdoor, some for money, some for fun. I have been influenced by the portraits of Imogen Cunningham, Paul Strand, Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon that I saw when I was beginning to make portraits. Over the past 50 years I have had the opportunity to photograph celebrities. Included were Bianca Jagger, Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Lauren Bacall. They were nice, polite but I felt as if I was photographing a hardened veneer acquired from being public people. I began photographing people on the street that I had never met before and found this much more rewarding. There was no hardened veneer and when the photograph was completed I had a photograph of someone I had never seen photographs of before, adding gratification to the whole experience.
