I try to create photographs that tell a story, sometimes a pointed story, sometimes (usually) subtle. I made four photographs of my father on the Fourth of July. Unlike my mother, he has always been willing to sit for me. In this case, he stood. This image makes me wonder whether a photograph tells a story in the moment of its making or in retrospect. It’s probably both sometimes. He told me something devastatingly sad about the last 30 years of his life (he’s 82 here). It’s dirty family laundry that will stay with me for now. But when I was developing and scanning and then look at the photograph I made, I couldn’t help imbuing the portrait with what was revealed a couple of hours after. That revelation was in him here. Maybe he was already thinking of telling me. Maybe it just came out later. Either way, his honesty is enmeshed and entwined with his portrait of that day.