I don't see myself as a photographer. I still see the photographs and collages as a resource for the painting.

I still love to look at photographs but I couldn't do it myself anymore.

To see yourself, and for others to see you, is a form of validation. I'm interested in that very mysterious and mystical way we relate to each other in the world.

When I started at Pratt, Spike Lee had his 40 Acres and A Mule studios down the street. You'd see Rosie Perez walking around going to Mike's Coffee Shop. So it was this black bohemian.

The reason I call myself a documentary photographer is the idea of how photographs contain and participate in history.

I posed as an album-cover designer and photographer... That I today have some album covers and photographs to show for myself is a monument to the attention-to-detail of my disguise.