Sometimes the reality during a photo session can overwhelm the photos, and when I photographed the esteemed Nobel laureate, Isaac Bashevis Singer, that is what happened: He and his wife, Alma were living in a modest retirement complex on the beach in Miami. Gentle and polite, Singer graciously consented to my photo session, but every few minutes he would turn to his wife and ask, “Who is she?”

He would drift in and out of connection to us, but at one point he re-joined the conversation by asking why his wife had just called someone a 'grumpus.' “You cannot call him a grumpus. You do not know what is in a man’s soul.”

His comments humbled us all, yet we continued the session. As he went in and out of his own personal focus, sometimes speaking quietly in Polish or Yiddish, my camera symbiotically began to follow his rhythms. When he was ‘away’ so was my hard edge. I believe it was to be his last photo session.