JRM: You can see why I had so much fun writing the essay for this. It wasn’t even necessary to write an essay; Rich is a good writer. His afterword is very good, and he describes the work intelligently and in an interesting way. But what this proves when you look at [the book] and, believe me, I don’t classify it in any way as a photojournalist… What we learned as police reporters, when I was a police reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, was that photographers are always better reporters—better journalists—than reporters are, and the way to get to the story, or to get to the heart of the matter, is to follow the photographer.

…I want to urge all of you to buy the book, because I’m not going to give away the secret of Richard’s father’s fascinating story [told by Ross in the afterword]. But what struck me when I looked at the pictures for the first time on the computer screen were the juxtapositions. I mean, [Ross] is a guy with an imagination which is above and beyond what you usually see in photography books. He’s making associations and connections that HE doesn’t even understand. And I saw it as my job to draw some of them out.