A Life of Noticing

I learned early that nothing lasts forever.

I lost my brother when I was thirteen.

A few years later, I lost my father.

At that age I didn’t have words for what those experiences would mean.

But perhaps they taught me something I would understand much later:

ordinary moments are fragile.

People leave.

Time moves.

And the smallest things can become the things we remember most.

In my early twenties, I left home with a backpack.

India.
Nepal.

I didn’t go there to become a photographer.

I went because I was curious.

Somewhere between the streets, mountains and conversations with complete strangers, I picked up my first camera.

I wasn’t chasing beautiful photographs.

I was learning to look.

Later came Australia.

Long roads.
Open landscapes.
The outback.

Space has a way of changing the way you look.

There was less noise.

More waiting.

More light.

I began to understand that sometimes you don’t need to search for a photograph.

You need to stay still long enough for it to find you.

When I began working professionally, I started by assisting other photographers.

I learned cameras.

Light.

Timing.

But the most important lessons had very little to do with photography.

I learned to watch people.

To listen.

To earn trust.

To understand that the person in front of the camera will always matter more than the camera itself.

Eventually photography became my life.

Weddings.
Families.
Streets.
People.
Cities.

For a long time these seemed like different kinds of photography.

Eventually I realized I was looking for the same thing everywhere.

Not the event.

Not the pose.

Not the obvious moment.

The moments between the moments.

And then there was New York.

A city that keeps teaching me to look again.

Everything happens at once.

People collide.
Light disappears between buildings.
Stories begin and end in seconds.

You can walk the same street a hundred times and never see the same street twice.

For a photographer, that is an extraordinary gift.

Eventually I began working with Leica.

Manual focus slowed me down.

It required me to be there before the photograph happened.

To anticipate.

To watch.

To wait.

The camera became quieter.

And so did I.

More than twenty-five years after picking up that first camera, I still feel like I’m learning to see.

I still walk.

I still wait.

I still miss photographs.

And I still get excited when something happens in front of me that I could never have planned.