A Million Haitian Flamboyants

When I was six-teen I drove down a famous canyon in Los Angeles. I was heading toward the Freeway over-pass. I made a hard right. It was like a “Pittsburgh Miter Square. I went back up the canyon and accelerated ten miles per hour faster. I made the hard right. I went back up the canyon a third time, and came toward the hard right at fifteen miles per hour faster. It turned out that sixty was too fast. The hard right won. The Porsche spun endlessly. The car rolled back into the guard rail. I think I blacked out. When I focused I popped out of the car and danced along the yellow line as if I was auditioning for the role of Jets or Sharks in Westside Story..

The next week I repeated the exercise in a Jaguar. Then after three spin outs, I decided to go for the record. The heavier car raced down the hill. It started to flip. I think I blacked out again. I remember finding myself at the other end of the overpass. Not a scratch but an exhilarating heart rate. I discovered what being alive meant to me. A number of years later I was still chasing my adventures at record speeds. The speed spoke to my passions. I knew life as it was had another level/gear. As they say, “it should”.

@MercedesBenzMuseum @UNSTUDIO The first model

Many years later I was gunning my engine in a rental car along the rain drenched Autobahn from Berlin to Stuttgart. The engine was a type that sounded like it ran on rubber bands. Every Porsche, Mercedes and more were passing me illegally on the right. My speedometer was reaching numbers that didn’t exist. I couldn’t go faster, but for almost six hours I became a melding of Robert Mitchum’s gleaming into the moonlight from Night of the Hunter, Jack Nicholson’s demon in The Shining and just possibly a gurgling Dr. Frankenstein’s reveling “It’s Alive”. I sat on the end of the drivers seat with chin on the wheel screeching for speed. I am pretty sure I inherited the need for speed from my dad.

Hours later I sat in front of my Stuttgart hotel. My foot was exhausted from thrusting on the accelerator. I headed for a restaurant that served large plates of Currywurst and Hot Spätzle. I sipped on a few shots of whiskey and liters of beer. In bed that night I pre-visualized what my camera might see tomorrow. Life was as it should be.

I made my way to the Mercedes Benz Museum in the rain my first morning. I was shooting for my book, Portraits of the New Architecture/2. I needed the rain to disappear before I shot the exterior. I sauntered inside to catch a glimpse of “Benz” history. It was exhilarating. I stood quietly next to a 1901 baby and glanced across the platform to a twenty-first century prototype. This was a feast for my eyes. The Interior was a combination of a “John Wick” movie meshed with “Metropolis”. It was future/past seductive.

For two days I prowled Stuttgart like a wounded cat. I couldn’t get a break from god’s rain. I returned to the museum daily every time I saw a break in the clouds. Sometimes I would wait for five or six hours not wanting to miss the Gloria Swanson closeup.

When a photographer knows what moment he/she is waiting for there is nothing that can move the eyes. Nightfall would come. Three hapless days. I waited, I waited.

The following afternoon arrived with a bit of hope. With a prayer I saw cloud dispersement. I had seen every Mercedes in the museum. But I still needed just one exterior shot. The Mercedes Benz Museum is like a 21st century ode to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Modernist Guggenheim. I earnestly invoked my cat’s mental telepathy powers. I stood where I needed to stand. I caught the arched rainbow streak across the sky like a million Haitian Flamboyants cascading from the heavens to earth. For a few seconds I understood that there was nothing I wouldn’t do to “make” the photograph that mattered.

I remember the architect told me I was “lucky”. My mind was asylum mad. I had done everything I needed to do to capture an impossible moment. As the sun appeared my eyes welled up. I exhausted all possibilities to succeed.