When I began photographing children a few years ago, I never imagined that I would still be doing so to this day. From the very first sittings, I decided to approach portrait sessions with children in the same manner as I worked with my adult models - with my camera firmly fixed to a tripod, and in absolute darkness. Then leaving my subjects to themselves, I ask nothing more of them than that they not move too much. And so begins what some might call the "dance of light"', a sort of divine rite, a primitive calling forth of the God Photon, with a little help from my more than fifty-year-old Czech-made flashlight.

I have never suggested to a child (nor has it ever been necessary to do so) that he or she express any particular feeling. The protective cocoon of darkness prompts the child, like the seeker of gold being led to the bottom of the mine, to plunge deeply within him or herself, and to produce, ineluctably, these faces we see, these faces marked with such gravity.