AB: I was taking pictures in black and white in the early '70s. I was fascinated with [Magnum co-founder Henri] Cartier-Bresson and I went to The Museum of Modern Art often and was well acquainted with Winogrand, Friedlander, Arbus, etc. While I was a student at NYU film school, I co-founded a "friends of photography" club and we decided to project slides -- partly in order to stay out of the darkroom and concentrate on making images, and also just for the fun and beauty of seeing the color and large scale. Around that time ('74) I came across some Joel Meyerowitz pictures published in ArtForum. They excited me greatly, and I looked Joel up in the phone book. Very generously, he introduced me to some of his students, who were making color prints, and that began to change how I approached making pictures. I was also becoming familiar with Eggleston's and Shore's work, and my friend Richard Pare was showing me astonishing 19th century material he was collecting for what became the Centre Canadien d'Architecture. Also, looking back, I had a fabulous film education in New York in the '70s -- it was possible to see everything, and I tried to. That was the thinking!

Jörg Colberg