I have photographs taken of me at the time I was addicted, and thought I looked good. I see them today and realize my eyes were dead.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I still love to look at photographs but I couldn't do it myself anymore.
In 1985, I saw a tape of myself where my eyes were puffy. I looked very tired and bedraggled and not as youthful as I would like to have been.
I look at old photos of me, and I don't feel connected to them at all.
Once I've taken photographs, I look at them, and I get into them, and I'm there for the moment - and then that's it. I find little time for reflection.
My eyes don't work, at least not fully, because they are blocked by disease. The scene around me appears through a kind of curtain, a haze.
I have a picture of myself in my mind as I walk around every day, until I look in the mirror-and then I'm stunned.
My pictures are my eyes. I photograph what I see - and what I want to see.
I love this life. I feel like I am always catching my breath and saying, 'Oh! Will you look at that?' Photography has been my way of bearing witness to the joy I find in seeing the extraordinary in ordinary life. You don't look for pictures. Your pictures are looking for you.
No one could possibly look all the time like my photographs. It is dreadfully hard to live up to them. They stare at me everywhere.
I knew people were going to see me see deteriorate before their eyes.