“The camera I used for my first ever picture was a Bakelite toy called Start. The man at the model shop in the shopping street near the station had talked me into buying it, and I had vaguely sensed some kind of mystery in that little black box, so without any particular interest in the practice I was simply taken by the charm of the thing.

It was a camera though, so I took it home just in case, and with no ideas in mind began to make pictures of the flowers in our garden, our dog, the big shiny silver water tanks in the fields next to the house, the white paths along those tanks, and my siblings sitting on the veranda — after which my interest vaporised, and that was about it. I was in the sixth grade.”