“As a child I was always interested in the

cinema, the cinema was the big picture show. Back then I didn’t understand the art of photography, it was an escape from the dark living of my home – of my mom and my stepfather and him being a heroin addict. Leaving the house was a way to be free, and to be free, well, a lot of us go to the cinema to forget the problems and we go into the screen.

That cinematic screen became something that I would think of as a foundation for me, not knowing where this was gonna go. I loved the image and the story. As I grew older, I was looking for adventure. Becoming a teenager became problematic for me, the situation in the house became very tense, my brother was born and I went into the streets.

It was also a time of rock n’ roll, the hippie movement, the Vietnam War protests. I started to associate with socialists. Issues were being talked about through music, you know, Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye. That was our generation: to question, not to trust. Then I got caught up in the drug scene and went to prison at Rikers Island. When I got out of Rikers Island I knew I needed to fix a couple of things. As an addict, I needed to control the addiction. I tried different programs and in the end went on methadone. While I was on methadone I got my high school diploma back and studied really hard to get into university. I was very young at that time, only about 20 years old. I got a job working at a factory, and one day, on my way home from work at the factory I was walking through Fort Greene to Clinton Hill. At that time, it was a predominantly African- American community, no hipsters. That day, I ran across a small museum, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. There was a black and white photography class that was being taught by an African-American photojournalist called Beuford Smith. He became this guy who opened up the world of photography to me.