Robert E. Younger
I have been a photographer in mind and heart since grade school. Trading in my Brownie Starmite for 35mm in the mid-60s, I graduated through the subsequent years of high school, college, and a stint as a Marine Corps officer to larger formats; eventually adopting 8x10 in the early-80s.
I also graduated from making photographs for others, pictures I knew or at least hoped people would like; to making photographs for myself; making photographs in which I had some emotional skin. I realized that I was photographing places and things because of my interconnectedness with those subjects. I was making photographs because of the experience of making that connection; because making the picture gave me, gave my heart and soul a sense of my and the subject's place in a much larger physical and spiritual world.