Life Rarely Presents Fully Finished Photographs. An

But There Is More To A Fine Photograph Than Information. We Are Also Seeking To Present An Image That Arouses The Curiosity Of The Viewer Or That, Best Of All, Provokes The Viewer To Think-to Ask A Question Or Simply To Gaze In Thoughtful Wonder. We Know That Photographs Inform People. We Also Know That Photographs Move People. The Photograph That Does Both Is The One We Want To See And Make. It Is The Kind Of Picture That Makes You Want To Pick Up Your Own Camera Again And Go To Work.

That Statement [ Stephen Ambrose:'you, Sam, Have The Hardest Job, Which Is, Pretend Like Nothing Has Happened In The Last 200 Years.'] Woke Me Up To The Fact That The Landscape That Lewis And Clark Came Across Was Greater Than The Serengeti. And It's Gone.

The Neatest Part Of This Book I'm Working On - To Me - Are The Pictures That Show The Process... Because Photographers... Think Things Through And... It Isn't Luck, And It Isn't Random And It Isn't Accidental. It Isn't.

There Are A Lot Of Ways To Talk About The Life Of A Photograph. You Can Talk About The Afterlife Of A Photograph, And In The End I Talk About That, With The Richard Prince Picture. But Mainly, What I Dedicated The Book To Being About Was How Photographs Begin Their Life, And Where They Begin It. And They Begin It With The Photographer's Imagination And Instinct And Experience.

'woman On The Plaza,' With Its Distinct Horizon, Snow-like Surfaces, Wintry Wall, Stunning Sunlight, Sharp Shadows, And Hurrying Figure, Would Become The Most Biographical Of My Photographs - An Abstract Image Of The Landscape And Life Of Northern Ohio Where I Grew Up And First Practiced Photography.