It started off as more or less a traditional documentary project - meaning I was photographing people in the streets. I started working with a local housing advocate who provides legal advice. I went on these home visits with them, and the Lams were one of the families. I specifically zoned in on them because they welcomed me into their lives. They were like, "C'mon in - have dinner with us."

I earned their trust because I came back, showed them the pictures. The more I did it, the more they began to ignore me. The first time you go visit a family, they're not going to take baths in front of you or fight in front of you. And that's what ended up happening. I became like an uncle. I started picking up the kids at school.

There's a bar behind their heads with coats. That's because they don't have any closets. Not a single closet. These are old tenement buildings. When they got chopped up to make these four little apartments, they really shouldn't have been chopped up into four. The toilet's in the back, and the bathtub's in the kitchen. The plumbing's messed up.

This apartment is 300 square feet maybe, and for three years, you could find something every week. A 300-square-foot apartment full of life. A ton of energy, a ton of drama. I was blown away with the amount of picture-taking that can go on in a small space. That's when I stopped seeing the lack of closet space and the bathtub right there, because that's the way it is. I started paying attention to their eyes and gestures and the dramas in these little movements.

If you look at it, there's six table settings, and there's five of them, and the sixth one is for me. And I didn't even put two and two together because I ate with them every week. It took a friend to notice "you're part of the family now." They went to visit their relatives in China in 2004, and I went with them. They came to my wedding. The little girl was my flower girl. So it was great, this whole confluence of events and how life happens.

-- Interview conducted and condensed by Gabe Oppenheim

The Lams of Ludlow Street, part of "Eminent Domain: Contemporary Photography and the City" at the Humanities and Social Sciences branch of the New York Public Library (Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street) is on display through Aug. 29. For more information, call 917-275-6975 or visit exhibitions.nypl.org/eminent.