Notes From West Brighton

In the early 1980s, I moved to the West Brighton neighborhood of Staten Island, New York where I became an itinerant photographer recording life as I found it. New York’s “forgotten borough” was much like my childhood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, a working class milieu of unnoticed people and vernacular architecture. Although I haven’t lived in Chicago for many years, my experiences of the harshness and toughness of working class Chicago have continued to inform my choices and my work. Every time I walked through the neighborhoods of Staten Island with my camera, I felt a sense of adventure. I never knew what I would find but it quickly became apparent to me that I understood the familiar as being very exotic. In everyday life, there is an oddness to the ordinary.