The poetry that is available on the street on any given day, free of charge, is as exciting to me today as it was on day one of living in New York. New York has been my greatest teacher, and my love for this city has not wavered in more than thirty years of living in it.

It’s the simultaneity of the city that I connect to, the collaboration of a multitude of elements in a blink. The way an object loose in the city is sculpted by the weather—a discarded spaghetti package, a blackening banana peel, the shaft of light on construction netting. Pictures from the gutter.

This Mary Oliver quote guides me: “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” There is a power in describing life as it is. That is the motivating force behind my pictures.