"I grew up in Chicago, was taken away to Los Angeles for a number of years, and then reprieved back to Chicago. Upon my return I experienced a tremendous feeling of rising up, of getting back to a real place, and that excitement never wore off. When I later actually made it to the East Coast, which I like even better, I had that feeling all over again."¹

"In the first grade I learned to read, mostly from Batman comics, and read whatever I pleased from that time on. I enjoyed building model airplanes and ships, and also doing magic tricks. When I was eleven or twelve, working from an encyclopedia article, I put together a photographic darkroom, including an enlarger made out of an old bellows camera. For years I spent hours every day printing pictures of the dog, my father, a telephone pole, clouds.

"My family...