ORIGINAL SHIPPING ANNOUNCEMENT: DISPATCH FROM 20 JANUARY.
 
My hope for every young photography student is that there comes a point when the need to make the work overrides the desire to do well at school. This happened to me in earnest while I was in graduate school in 1984. I compare that moment to a first kiss: you get only one chance and, with a little luck, you do not waste it.
 
After Garry Winogrand's memorial service in March that year, and an unexpected snowstorm in New York City on that warm spring day, I took the RR subway to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to visit my high-school teacher, the artist Len Bellinger. As usual, I carried my 8×10 camera and film holders in a backpack, with the tripod hanging from one side. A diligent student, I took the opportunity to photograph at my former school, a predominantly Italian-American Catholic girls' high school. I was immediately overwhelmed by recognition and terror. I returned many times over the following months, intuitively knowing there was something important to unravel. Only a few years earlier, within those walls, I had lived my adolescent life—a time of intense joy and unfathomable pain. Without hesitation, I leapt off the cliff that spring day. I was in love.
 
This book includes the Brooklyn work alongside photographs made at the time in two Catholic girls' schools in New Haven. All the work was made with an 8×10 camera and printed in platinum, a practice I still use. The influence of photographers whose work I was devouring, particularly August Sander and Diane Arbus, is evident. The seeds of my future projects are all here. With the Catholic girls, I began a lifelong habit of obsessive work that I might not wish on anyone I care about. Looking back over forty years, I do not think I had much choice. I remain deeply grateful to everyone who has supported me over the decades, including the extraordinary girls who generously gave their time to be photographed in 1984.