'Chasing the Light', a black and white photographic exhibition from Pulitzer Prize winning photographer David Longstreath

For the past five years I have been on a journey, one that has taken me through the back roads of Southeast Asia and the ancient city of Varanasi in India. What catches my eye and sparks my interest are the faces of the people that cross my path. Those faces call to me but it is their reactions that I have come to photograph.

I first picked up a camera when I was 16 years old. At the time in high school I was very much a part of the Art club crowd and spent my weekends touring what galleries I could find in an out of the way place called Oklahoma. I spent hours studying the paintings of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell.

During an eight year tour with the United States Navy I trained and worked with excellent photographers. I was equipped with some of the finest camera equipment in the world, all Leica and Leicaflex and I was traveling the world making images.

It was during this time that I was introduced to the notion of 'Chasing the Light'. On a port visit to Naples, Italy a chief photographer rousted me out of my bunk one morning around 4am. When I asked the need to be in such a hurry at such an hour he told me in almost a whisper as if to be telling a secret, "We have to catch the early morning light". That morning we wandered back alleys and markets as life in Naples woke and went to work. Bathed in warm glows and soft tones people walked in and out of shadow in what looked like an old world painting. The light was pure magic and the lessons learned that day are still with me.

I still do the same today, I still wake early and I still chase that early morning light. I still wear out pairs of hi tech shoes and now I even have an Iphone ap that tells me just how far it is that I have walked.

The great Welsh photographer Philip Jones Griffiths once told me that "color complicates things".

With that in mind "Chasing the Light" is an uncomplicated looked at some of the people and places of my recent career.