This is a story about a very simple room that to this day is stamped clearly in my consciousness.

It all started in 1959. By this time my Father was a man of means. He traveled the world with my mother on one adventure after another: safaris in Africa, and swimming with turtles in the Seychelles Islands, but of course nothing pleased my mother more than a shopping trip to Europe. It was her love, her passion and truly a testament to her expertise in finding the most expensive item in any store.

So my father announced one fall that over our Christmas break, the whole family would be making the grand tour of Europe. It was time for his son to see the world. This was not some ordinary trip; this was an excursion of a lifetime. Each leg had it’s own story, but for the sake of not meandering into Swiss pastry and watches, or English theater, I will stay firmly fixed in our first stop, Paris.

We arrived at the Plaza Athenee. We were shown our elegant and beautiful suite and then immediately off we went to Christian Dior at the Place Vendome.  It was so opulent: the women beautiful, the smells that invigorated every item and soul with a delicate French perfume…and at that moment I began to fall in love with the French, the women that is, not necessarily the men.

I noticed, even at the ripe old age of 14, that the women in Paris were different. They seemed to dress, not of the moment in the latest styles, but rather had an innate sense and style of their own. They seemed timeless and oh so…beautiful, elegant and refined. They were beyond reach. They were to be adored, mysterious yet provocative.

Even on the streets, I noticed the women in Paris were different. They wore beautiful cashmere sweaters with pearls and elegant scarves and sunglasses. They had beautiful long legs with simple skirts and beautiful shoes, all in great taste. They all seemed so approachable, yet un-approachable.

America seemed so hard to me. The women were athletic and the “American Dream” was a California blonde in a bathing suit. America was strong, vibrant but seemed to lack mystery and timelessness.

All of this, unbeknownst to this young desirous 14 year old, has had a big influence on me (then and now). My idea of style derives from this first trip to Paris.

This opulent, extravagant, beautiful trip began to teach me about restraint and good taste. It was on this trip I began to notice that less is more. Style and elegance lie within the soul of a woman, as much as they do in the clothes she chooses to wear on the outside. That sexiness is not necessarily wearing less, but perhaps wearing more, with what lies underneath a mystery to be discovered. Paris at age 14 is where the women of France began to show me the art of simplifying: real style versus fashion, allure versus sex.

In the spring of 1971, when I was a graduate student in New Haven, my wife was pregnant and we decided to look for a small house near the water on the Connecticut shore.

This is where another epiphany occurred, an event as singular and powerful to me as walking into the Christina Dior store in Paris some 12 years earlier.

I remember meeting our elderly, but adoring, real estate agent at her home in Guilford, Connecticut. She invited us into her 18th century house near the green. It was like many other pre-revolutionary houses I had seen with small rooms, fireplaces, paneling and hand-hewn joists. It was warm, cozy, and friendly, but rather uneventful for me. It was she, our agent that I loved not her house until…

She told me she had a renter who paid for a few rooms off the side of the house. He was a young Japanese professor at Yale with his young wife. She offered to show us his apartment, and it is here that France and Connecticut merged into something that I hope is in all my work.

She opened the door into one of the most beautiful spaces I have ever been in. You see it was not elaborate, or well stocked with furniture; in fact, it was just the opposite.

It was a spare 18th century room with beautiful, unvarnished worn floors, original white horsehair plaster walls. It was clean, immaculate, well lit room, with just two pieces of furniture; a perfect mahogany bed and chest were placed in the perfect spot in the room.

I remember wondering, “did they agonize over its placement?” or “did they intuitively know where to place the furniture?” They were not placed a centimeter in the wrong place. Perfectly placed, simple, spare, elegant, and perfect. It was almost monastic, yet the human hand was apparent, which made it feel loving. They had found perfect harmony in the room. I wondered if this was reflected in their marriage as well.

The room wasn’t grand; it was simple. It wasn’t elaborate; it was perfect. It was refined, timeless and beautiful, like a French woman I would want to get to know.

Finding this relationship between the natural world and things, between style and clothes, grace and charm, I hope is in my pictures. If it is, it comes from many years of watching, and learning. Even though the clock is continually turning towards what is new; what is truly magical stands outside the bounds of time.