The photographs in this series capture ordinary life – its familiarity, beauty and ephemeral pleasure.

I was 16 years old the first time I made a picture like this. It was 1975, and a passing-period bottleneck halted progress up the stairwell of my small high school. Impatient, I stood with my textbooks pressed against my chest, watching the boys lope downward. One in class of 89 students, by the time I reached that stairwell, everything and everyone in the school was well known, and I chafed against sameness of our days.

In that instant, however, I was overcome by a desire to preserve the familiar before it washed into the flat sea of lost memory. Following the light from the window on the landing below to the well-known faces of the descending students, I closed my eyes tightly, and made a mental picture. This experience spawned a lifelong practice of capturing the infinite pleasure of ordinary life.