First Entry
I love photography. It has always been good to me. It has taken me to the places I wanted to go, helped me meet some of the people I wanted to meet, and allowed me to share with others some of my deepest experiences.
I was lucky. In the early days of my career I chose to photograph people and events that later came to be socially and culturally significant. But when I was photographing Jim Morrison in the Hunter College Auditorium, or Janis Joplin in the Anderson Theater on New York’s Lower East Side, neither event had, then or now, any meaning for me beyond my momentary love of the music they were creating and the way they looked creating it. The thrill, the inspiration of the moment was all there was. To capture a flickering moment of joyous experience and share it with others — that was the reason I began photographing in the first place, and that is still the reason I take pictures today. I was never a fan.
In between the beginning and now, the chance to earn a living at what I loved to do occurred and so I took it and kept taking it, and to this sort of chance in life, I dedicate this book.
Try to be happy, try to have fun, and try to share this happiness and fun with those around you, and may God (the universal experience) expand your conception of happiness to include helping those near you who need help. And may communication bring all of us on this planet closer together, closer to God, closer to each other.