Perry Hall, Silhouette - 2006 - Spring Street & West Broadway

Awakened by multiple sirens late at night, I watched, transfixed, the sight of this inferno, only a block away. Finally remembering my camera, I was able to record some of our firemen's brave professionalism in the face of this hell of flames.

In 2001, I began attending the Critical Inquiry class taught by Dorothy Koppelman here at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, at first submitting oil paintings for criticism. Late that year, I purchased a small digital camera to record images as ideas for paintings. As I am a slow and tedious painter, I slowly began to concentrate on the photographic image itself.

As I learned to see beauty in, and to have sincere emotion about, the everyday, my work improved, and I find my camera now constantly looking for instances of this beauty.

For this I will always be grateful.

—PH