Beatrice Wood in her studio from a photo taken for an NBC series on successful aging. I then played with the image years later with Polaroid transfers, making it into a smeared transformation of Beato. . .

A visitor to my studio on the Oct. tour last year asked to take a photo of me. She fumbled a bit and . . .

As I was cleaning my darkroom, now storage room, I ran across contact sheets, slides--and grabbed a stool. I had never printed some of...