I was born under the sign of Gemini, which seems as good a reason as any to explain who I am and why I do what I do.

I embody a peculiar type of that species -- more divisive than harmonious. Definitely a "bi" nature still in the process of becoming a "uni". Think binational, bilingual, bilateral, bibulous, bifurcate, billiards, binary, biochemistry, bistro.

But thankfully, that which I do with my life, photography, seems to be able to heal and unite me, as much as it can. It offers me the possibility of unifying my disparate Gemini selves; of using both hemispheres. And I say 'possibility' because it's not always successful. Sometimes, I have 'felt a funeral in my brain'.

But when it does work, it's like an old-time religion that requires suffering, knowledge, and faith -- above all faith -- to reach that Promised Land of self-fullfillment.

Maybe a photographer's life is suited to a Gemini.

While I made the decision to pick up a camera, I like to think that fate played a hand in things. My father was a photographer at heart, and I inherited his visual curiosity and more importantly, his documentary urges.

I myself was a biochemist before I was a photographer because the logic and the precision required by the scientific method appeal to me. Similarly, the exactness of photographing attracts me. The ability of a camera and a photographer to translate a slice of the chaos surrounding us into a visual model, and to do so in a precise, creative moment is more or less, structurally scientific. You can test your perceptions of the world in the laboratory of the street by creating an approximation of reality in two dimensions.