I like photographs that are beautifully composed - the moments captured gracefully with light and shadow having playful dialogues. I prefer order and balance to chaos and unpredictability. That’s why among Japanese photographers, I feel more kinship to Ishimoto and Narahara than Moriyama and Tomatsu. But when I looked at these photographs I took 15 years ago, I was horrified by how badly composed they were - the awkwardly missed moments with ugly uneven tonalities. They are the exact opposite of my ideal of how pictures should look. Yet, I am drawn to them now because it shows how difficult it was to tame New York street scenes and how foolishly young I was to believe that I could conquer them. (I couldn’t)