A train carrying Abraham Lincoln to his inaugural in 1861 stopped briefly at the Peekskill train station. Lincoln emerged, said a few words, and rumbled off into history. That moment is still remembered in Peekskill, a town on the Hudson River north of New York City. The depot where Lincoln's train stopped still stands. It is now a museum. A life sized statue, recently cast and realistically painted in color, stands at its front door. I chose to photograph it at high noon, when the light was extremely contrasty, and Lincoln himself recedes into the shadows. It still did not work -- the color paint on the statue, intended to make it seem more realistic, had the opposite effect in my photograph. Lincoln looked too much like a statue and too little like a man.

By converting the image to black and white, I abstract the photograph and make it less real as a statue but seem more real as a man. My imagination now takes me back to 1861 and Lincoln stops talking for a moment to simply look at us, his face only suggested rather than revealed.