I want to tell you about some photos I've taken. Don't worry, this isn't a transcription of my sight-seeing trip to the Grand Canyon, or a retelling of the time I caught aliens on film with my Polaroid. It's much worse than that.

One of my first real jobs was in a mini photo lab. It wasn't bad work, but I hated dealing with the public. Anyone who's worked in retail knows the kind of abuse certain customers think they owe the folks behind the cash register. The Golden Rule of Customer Service is this: Your job depends on smiling through people's misdirected tantrums. Never mind all the times someone would bring in blank rolls of film for developing and then blame me for erasing his kid's Bar Mitzvah pictures.

Around that time, I was going through a heavy Dada/Fluxus/Found-Art phase in my creative development. It occurred to me to make copies of the photos I handled for my own use. Slow periods on the job became arts-and-crafts time, in which I assembled collages from customers' snapshots. Vacation pictures transformed into surreal landscapes. Family pets became monstrous beasts, towering over famous monuments. My bulletin board was a gallery of themes, depending on what caught my eye from shift to shift. Birthday cakes, grandmothers, golfing trophies — all had their day in my display.

Suddenly, the customers I had so dreaded became a welcome sight. I gladly tolerated complaints about prices, quality, or the state of the world, knowing my reward would be fresh supplies for my art. At the same time, I was really getting to know these people, becoming enmeshed in their private lives. Not that I ever made much conversation while making change. Their pictures told thousands of words about them — their hobbies and secret pastimes, moments of glory and loss, family picnics and office affairs. I felt like a private eye who never had to trail someone at three in the morning.

Soon my conscience spoke up. Was I stealing every time I made a postcard from photos of exotic fish? Was I becoming a voyeur, pondering over peculiar amateur boudoir models? I saw my customers in public places and tried to quell my thoughts. Did the guy at the bowling alley realize I knew about his predilection for unusual undergarments? Could the woman at the library imagine that I knew about her tattoo removal? To add to my paranoia, a local paper ran an article about a photo-lab employee who passed around some embarrassing pictures at a party. Turned out one of the guests was the photographer, who was none too pleased. I decided to clean out my remaining stash of collage materials before there was a similar article about me.

Breaking the habit of snooping through strangers' photos was surprisingly easy. Even though Jerry Springer wasn't around back then, I quickly grew desensitized to bizarre sights and shocking lifestyles. I stopped wondering if the people I saw on the street led mysterious lives, and realized we're all freaks in some secret way. But there's one thing I'll always wonder whenever I drop off a roll of film for processing: Who's going to end up with a postcard collage made from my honeymoon pictures?

— Mike