Although my photos have been exhibited alongside those of Berenise Abbot, Margaret Bourke-White, Brassai, Edward Curtis and Weegee, I do not consider myself to be a professional photographer. It is an activity I engage in more as the product of a sort of fetish than as a means of expression in and of itself. My formal training consists of two years in high school spent learning the basics of black and white photography and development but my involvement with the camera and has been lifelong. My parents have always been avid at documenting the events in their lives and because of this, my family learned to observe and reflect on life through the eye of the camera. While I was growing up, its presence was a natural fixture of every occasion and in my late teens I developed an aversion to this, viewing it as a tool that sapped the life out of an episode both during and after it happened. For me, social gatherings became more about taking pictures of people together instead of recognizing the importance of being together. Through such use, photography lost its innocence, further punctuated by the use of cheap, fully automated cameras fixed with flashes and loaded with film made to heighten color beyond reality. Cameras and film had evolved as mere imitations of reality in which the resulting image was devoid of any aesthetic imparted by the nature of the medium and the instrument. To regain this lost innocence and retain photography as an important part of my life, I only use old cameras and photograph situations with an inherent intimacy between subject and observer. Through the transformation of colorful, three-dimensional people and objects into black and white, two-dimensional images, I teach myself about my vision of the world and my relationship to it. In a way I am continuing the tradition of using photography as a tool of reflection and in this way, its evolution is tied to mine. But rather than use it as a means of sharing this vision, or to impart something specific I have to say, my involvement with photography is about my own internal dialogue with myself.