When I told my mother that I had decided to become a photographer the first question she asked me was “Yes, but what are you really going to do to earn a living?” And Dad followed up with: “You should take teaching. A teacher will always find a job, wherever you go. Then, on weekends and during the summers you can be a photographer.”

Of course they had reasons to believe that. They had lived through the Depression and those people lucky enough to have worked for the government, like, say, teachers, postal workers, police officers and firemen, even garbagemen, continued to earn a living while others, like my father and his pals they lost jobs and couldn’t find work. Another reason they had problems with me becoming a photographer: the only other photographers they had any contact with were either the sweaty guys who rudely careened through my bar mitzvah snapping pictures, or, the mousy guy who once shot their mug shots, who had fumbled over his shutter cable checking the exposure over and over again even though he had shot the same picture in the same place, with the same camera, the same lens, on the same film, using the same lighting for thirty freaking years. You can see why I still get agata whenever I think about it. The most important thing in my life - then.

The other unspoken reason for their concern was that they had no reason to believe I would succeed at making a living as any kind of photographer, and so, when I finally told them I wanted to take pictures for magazines they really rolled their eyes. You see, I had a history of dreaming. When they were buying a small piece of land on a lake in Ridgefield, Connecticut, to build their summer home, I would fall asleep dreaming of the pirate ship I would build and sail out on the lake. It would have a small cabin where I would sleep and the raised quarterdeck where I would sit and study the lakeshore ready to attack unsuspecting boaters.