This is a series of portraits that I started shooting in 1979 with a 4x5 camera when I was in college.

I liked working with the larger format because it made me slow down and work very deliberately. The slowness of the process gave my subjects time to relax into their position, and drop much of the pretense that they would normally put forth when a camera was pointed in their direction.

People look more like who they are, and they also were more invested in the process, taking it more seriously.