The first photograph I took that spoke to me was the one titled “Rosie, Defiance, Ohio 1972.” I was at The Defiance College in Defiance, Ohio, for one semester in 1972. I picked the school solely because of its name. I was not a particularly good student at that time in my life, but something happened there that became the catalyst for my obsession with photography. I had a political science professor who took an interest in me and introduced me to the darkroom at the school. He hired me to take some photographs of a sculpture he had made or bought. I don’t remember the specifics, but those were the first rolls of film I had ever developed and printed. Though the pictures came out horribly, I was intrigued by the process. I loved the solitude of the darkroom. I loved the chemistry and precision needed to work in that environment.

I remember the day I took that photograph. I had one roll of film, and I went to the park with two friends of mine, Rosie and Sue. It was a cold winter day, and they were running through the playground, jumping through piles of leaves, going over the support where the seesaws used to be, sliding down the slide, and spinning on the merry-go-round, while I followed them around trying to capture the merriment of the day and document those moments in time. I didn’t use the whole roll of film. I took about 15 shots at the playground and a few on our way back to the school. I went back to the dorm and finished the roll. The next day, I rushed to the darkroom to develop my film and see what I had. I remember the excitement of anticipating what I had captured and seeing the results. I remember looking at my negatives and thinking that I had overdeveloped them. I remember printing the first contact sheets and, finally, a print. When I saw the photograph of “Rosie,” I thought, “Wow, this is pretty cool.” The background was very soft, and it was a tender, pensive moment. It didn’t matter that you couldn’t see her whole face; you could feel her ease. It was a beautiful moment, a perfect slice of life instantly frozen in time. I was hooked.

At the end of the semester, I left the school and went back to Boston. I enrolled at the New England School of Photography, where I studied for the next two years with the hope of becoming a commercial photographer, but I could never get off the streets. People fascinated me. I loved the way I could capture them in an instant and preserve the moment forever. This was the beginning of my “Boston Years 1972–1975.”