"In a black & white 8 x 10 my grandfather, Herbert Dean, stares at my grandmother, a sly smile on his face. He was a storyteller. His thick, dark, calloused hands told stories. My father tells stories. I tell stories.

I'm fascinated with work, what work is, who does work, how much our identities are wrapped up in what we do with our hands. Shoeshine boy, ditchdigger, painter. My grandfather laughed at my father's hands because they were too soft. Still I think he was proud of the fact that my father didn't have to work with his back. This is progress.

My father is always working on something which he would ask me to research, mostly African-American and labour history. For example, my uncle worked in the coal mines of West Virginia. There was an accident. He would have died in the mine shaft had not a woman come by and heard his cries for help. She stayed with him for three days in the mine shaft until he got better. She sang to him and worked root medicine on his open wounds (spider webs are antiseptic). Later she became my aunt.

My folks collect old pictures, antiques they call them. They finger through auctions and flea markets and buy little histories. Other people's memories that get left behind. I grew up breathing the dust of stuff others had left behind. Paging through our dusty files, looking for reflections of me.

All these photos — images — are important to me. They have taught me things, taken me places. No matter how these images are transmitted in the future we must acknowledge how much work we are doing as image makers. Trying to feed the famine."