became interested in photography in the Fall of 1983, when I began my first semester at New York University. Between classes, I often found myself reading in Washington Square Park. From time to time, an elderly gentleman would stroll through the park taking photographs. Being young and amiable, I introduced myself and expressed an interest in what he was doing. Being old and amiable, he introduced himself as “André” and told me that he was a photographer.

I learned that he had been born in Hungary, served in the First World War, and emigrated to Paris in 1924. He came to America in 1936 under contract with Condé Nast.

Despite his age and failing health, he continued to travel on photographic assignments. He spoke about the people he had known throughout his career, and although I had not yet heard of them, he mentioned the photographers Man Ray, Brassaï, Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. But he spoke most often, and tenderly, about his late wife, Elizabeth.

Although our paths often crossed, he never indicated that he was one of the most important photographers of the 20th century.  After his death in 1985, a documentary entitled “André Kertész: A Poet with the Camera” was shown on PBS, and it was only then I discovered that my friend André was, in fact, André Kertész, the great photographer.

By that time, I had already begun making photographs and honing my darkroom skills.  I wasn't exactly Ansel Adams, but some of the work that emerged from those marathon printing sessions showed enough promise to encourage me to improve my technique and expand my vision.

I never liked “bells and whistles,” so I did most of my work with the two battered, manual-focus cameras that I still use today: a Contax 139 and a Yashica FX 103. I may have wished for a large-format camera from time-to-time, but I found the speed and portability of 35mm much better for capturing the hectic pace of life in New York, and what Kertész and others have called “the exact moment.”

Although not always successful, I’ve tried to express some part of this magic and mystery through my pictures.  This alone gives photography the sublime power of an art form—the capacity to instruct and surprise, and to offer us new ways of looking at the familiar.  There were a great many missed opportunities to be sure: times when the “perfect picture” presented itself, but either my hand wasn’t quick enough, or the camera lay helplessly out of reach.  This has saddened and frustrated me time and again, for the loss is indeed a great one.  In fact, someone once asked André what he regretted most that was denied him in his life. Without a moment’s hesitation he replied: “All those marvelous, fleeting images I seized with my eyes, but that escaped my camera.  Those are my only regrets.  They're still in my memory but—no pictures!  They would have been my best photographs.”

We are certainly poorer for the loss of these ellusive vistas, and yet I’ve often wondered whether life’s failures aren’t at least as important as its victories.  I continue to hope so, for all of us. 

Here are a few of my photographs.