I got the nerve to dream of making some good pictures in my lifetime after I learned about Eugène Atget and Julia Margaret Cameron.

Atget launched his work on the streets of Paris when he was 40 and Cameron began her famous photographs of friends when she was 53.

I started taking pictures when I was 38. My first portrait project was at First Mondays, a market in Scottsboro, Alabama, and it began with battered dolls.

When I could move close to the dolls I began doing the same thing with people.