I don’t fully know what I’m about to say right now.  I don’t know how to shape this life, or how to influence the world in a significant way. I don’t know how to change what the future will be. All I can do is try to leave something behind that reflects how the past was, in the hope that it might offer some clarity about what things were truly like during my lifetime. Because we can’t preserve ourselves forever, all we can do is document the moments we lived, and pass them on. That is my purpose, my foundation.

At my core, this is who I am. I can only strive to be the best I can be in what I do, whether it’s something I’ve done or something I have yet to do. I understand that this is subjective, but as I grow older, I aim to be kind to others. That’s how I want to live my later years, as opposed to my younger days. The standards I now hold myself to are based on the lessons I’ve learned from my past.

In my life, I’ve met some incredible people, and I’ve always tried to portray them as honestly as I can in my photographs. In each fleeting moment I capture, I freeze a part of their life, hoping that it might be viewed by others in the future. It’s in those moments, those tiny, brief flashes that I try to preserve the essence of who they were, at that very split second in time. And maybe, just maybe, those moments will offer insight or understanding to others long after we’ve gone.

For the past five years, I have had some medical issues. Though they are not serious, they are painful and disabling. They take away the ability to do the things “you did in life” that give it its meaning and so I am faced with constant reinvention, and I am having an issue deciding what I want to be next. I will take this one day at a time. To quote my favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson: “One thing in life is for certain, the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.”

These are the places I visited, the people I met along the way, and the people I hold dear throughout my life. Fifty-three years of photography is all I have to show for my life. It’s all I have to show of my life, and it’s all I have to give back to all of you.