There is a cliché that photographers who work in black and white first become obsessed with photography when they see the print appear as it develops in the darkroom. I became obsessed with it when I saw a horserace though a pair of binoculars. After the race I was overcome by sadness, as the event was over and I could not experience it again. Photography allows me to relive the emotions I had at the time of exposure.

I came to the United States from England in 1980 to pursue photography, mainly because the giants of commercial photography were in New York or shot there: Art Kane, Arnold Newman, Annie Liebowitz, Guy Bourdin, Pete Turner, Jay Maisel, Richard Avedon, as well as the art photographers, Adams, Arbus, Weston and Winogrand.

Strangers often engage me in conversation and, when they notice my British accent, mention how they would love to live in London for the culture and the art. I always like to say that wherever they are is just as interesting. We all imagine that going to some exotic setting would produce a wonderful new body of work, and I will not deny that traveling may broaden the eye as well as the mind. However, as a photographer, I am most active on my daily rounds. I have a liking for daily life; I enjoy the complexity and diversity of multiple individuals doing different things, unaware of one another. The ordinary is often extraordinary.

A few years ago there was fairly large cultural change in the group of people I worked with, in that my current co-workers are not visual artists. When I go to lunch with them, I notice that they are not bombarded with images; they do not look around the street in total amazement at all the things that are around them. Whereas I am like a small child looking around in astonishment, hardly able to walk and contain my bewilderment and excitement, much like many of the people I photograph. In this project I have taken on the job of framing and making sense of this onslaught of day-to-day images. My purpose is to bring these images to the attention of people whose focus is normally elsewhere.

I do not go out looking for pictures. My only real manipulation of the image is in the composition and printing the photographs in black and white. Also, sometimes I spend some extra time wherever I happen to be, if I think what is happening there is interesting.