I come from a filmmaking family. When I was ten years old we left California for Europe, and I found myself on the road for the first time, in an unfamiliar world. My parents gave me my first Kodak camera.

It took only twelve pictures at a time, but I loved it. I carried extra rolls of film in my pocket so I could take pictures of my new life and record everything, including the actors and animals on my stepfather’s film sets in Spain.

When I was twenty I covered the Six-Day War in Israel. It was my first experience telling stories visually. I was going to be a photojournalist, but my life took a different turn. Instead I became the editor of Aurum Press, a British publishing house that specialized in art and photography books. Later, I worked as a media consultant for Sotheby’s and produced a series of short films on the contemporary art scene. For many years after that, I was the director of Global Arts Productions, a London-based company that produced documentaries, dramas, and children’s films for television.

Eventually, I moved back to the US. As I was no longer running the business, I had more time on my hands. I began walking everywhere with a small, portable camera, obsessing over things like color, light, and texture. I became fascinated by mundane objects, and would lose myself for long moments in their extraordinary tactile qualities.

I found beauty in unlikely places: old walls, pavements, metal sidings. The closer I looked, the more abstract these objects appeared—and yet they were also very concrete. I realized that they form the basis of our perceptual world.

Nowadays I often find myself lying on the ground or with my face against a wall, looking at tarmac, road signs, graffiti, dividing lines, intersections, and the secret language of maintenance workers painted in brilliant yellow, white and red. Circles and squiggles and arrows abound. Wow! I used to pass these almost-invisible things every day of the week, oblivious. But now I take the time to stop and look. I hope you will enjoy these images, and be inspired to stop and look as well.