Photographs are only paper or film or pixels. They allude to something. Photographs are illusions. Photographers often suggest, we hint, but we are not always so direct. Illusions are unreal, they are mirages. And often they exist because the stories we tell ourselves are as astounding as what really happened. The text that accompanies the images in this book are not expanded captions. They are the stories I have told myself about the images. Some of them are as absolutely true and correct as I can possibly make them. Others are impressions. They are things the image has said to me and may have little or nothing to do with whatever the observer of these images may take away.