To my mind, however, this does not necessarily diminish it as art. The fact that I have thought about the 'X' pictures, and their implications, for six years now, indicates to me that there is something more there than obscenity. One of the most important things I learned at 220 is that art takes time. It takes time to make it, often years or decades for a body of work to come together. Many of our clients were 'mature' artists, with twenty or more years in, and they were often still working over images and ideas that they had begun long before.
Art also takes time to appreciate or judge.
Good criticism, like good art, is a slow and basically intuitive process, and also like art it must build on existing foundations. Darkroom work gets old quickly. Many of my clients in New York hired me because they could no longer tolerate the toxic chemicals, which seem to build up in the body and over time produce allergic reactions. By 1985 I didn't want to be in darkrooms any more either. I moved to Pennsylvania to concentrate on other things, like painting.