When I was fifteen, I noticed a small bald patch on the back of my scalp, an interruption in my long, brown hair. Within six months, I had lost almost all of my hair and learned that the cause was alopecia.

“This world. This world… our bright grieving world. We spin heavy with ache. We drift quietly down a current of stars. There’s pain all around, in and throughout

The moment I found out that my dad killed himself, my old life was over. For a long time after that, I hid from every perceptible change: I didn’t want to laugh or date or socialize again. I no longer wanted to actively participate in my own narrative. I was done. This project, as cliché as it sounds, gave me a newfound lust for the world around me. I became curious again. Once more, I had a reason to wake up in the morning. For others, I hope it has proven that when united, our souls and our passions are invincible.

So there you were: an adult who had nowhere to go. You had the whole world, but you did not have a home.

I hold the phone from my ear, screaming at her to stop, yelling at her to not tell me, because if I didn't hear the truth, I could exist in this world a little longer—this world where he was okay.

When I escaped to the world of young New York, full of Jews my own age who had been brought up on Seinfeld and knew at most the Yiddish for “go shit in the ocean,” I used these stories, illustrated with an imitation of my grandparents’ first-generation accents, to convey a sense that my workdays were like attending a never-ending family reunion.

“Now there’re some sad things known to man, but ain’t too much sadder than the tears of a clown.” This poignant lyric from “Tears of a Clown” by Smokey Robinson

I saw a man die on Skid Row. It happens every day. This story must be told in fragments. It’s hard to find an order to the thoughts. Death is nonlinear, like memory, not like life. But there is a beginning.

Even as a child I was always very aware of death. Maybe it is the awareness of mortality that represents a loss of innocence. My interest in photographing children comes from

In the beginning, not even our closest friends knew, and in the very beginning, I don’t even think we knew. Although we’d made significant progress since it had all began