When I was making 'Strong Island,' it was very clear to me that my brother's death was a point on a line that stretched back into the 1940s and beyond in my family - and in the nation.

I learned to be a hot-air balloon pilot to take tourists over the Masai Mara Reserve in order to earn some money and finance the work I was doing with my wife, Anne. We were studying the life of a family of lions for more than two years. Taking pictures was a way to capture information we could not put in words.

My mother's side of the family was in the production side of theatre. My grandfather, Jose Vega, was a general manager for Neil Simon shows on Broadway.

Family Quotes