"The way we experience life is clouded by psychology, moods, desire, and previous experience. The clear moments of understanding, vision, and thought are rare. They punctuate the rush of time and justify, hopefully, the stream of half-understood experiences. In photography, the clearly seen, symbolically resonate image is the reward of making what at times seems like an overwhelming amount of bad pictures. Perhaps it’s cumulative - each frame is equal to a single stroke of the brush, instead of coming together in one place like a canvas, they come together in time. It’s either that or I have simply wasted a ton of film. To paraphrase Szarkowski, I now have more images of Pilsen than Pilsen has bricks."

Paul D’Amato, Excerpts from journal entries made between 1989-2002