The Architecture of Cities: The World

The Architecture of Cities: The World

I still stand in wonderment: I feel like Shakespeare’s Puck: Not the merry wanderer of the forest nights: I am the 180º flip side of that.

Though I am six foot-three and a million pounds, I am Shakespeare‘s Puck: I am the merry wanderer: I am Puck’s daylight. I am his light: he is my light: I surrender my love for what freezes before my eyes.

I have stood in the Arcadian idyl of our planets’ paradise. I have stood in the center of our planets’ built metropolises. Wherever I may be my mind only hears the dulcet tones of nature’s pitter patter: My eyes see a reflection of myself in ourselves and in architectures’ reflection on our built environment. I then make a picture.

The things I admit to make me cringe a bit. Does making photographs truly make me that happy?

A friend recently wrote to me:”keep freeze framing those unique moments where built history reflects”. When I see those things that I need to see: When I make a photograph that I need to make, of course the day is mine: The moment is mine: The capture is mine.

One day in a particular year I felt I was concurrently in many countries and many cities. I remember it felt like I was a spider scrambling on all sides of a web that needed mending.

You might imagine the onslaught of emotions running through my mind: In one moment I was making portraits of famous artists: Henry Moore, Joan Miro and Willem de Kooning (stories for another time): in the next my body was running on empty trying to be somewhere before the light vanished.

Is it cathartic to talk/write about the intrusion of my heart entering my mind as I race from here to there to make pictures? No! But hindsight’s 20/20 allows me to reflect on what it has meant for me to race across millions of miles to make a single snap.

As I write I realize that I have come to terms with my personal insanity: I confess that every single picture I have made is a result of my mind celebrating something that I see; something that I literally express in a voluminous scream:”That’s it”.

The above is not a conversation that one would have with a fellow traveler, a fellow photographer.

The nature of what I have done and what I do and will in the future is my own personal drive to make a new photograph: it is like celebrating a feast of pleasures: like the pleasures of wearing attire that is old and agreeable: it is like the pleasures of donning, wearing something brand new.

Though I have traveled quite a bit for portraits there is nothing in my mind that compares to what the life and breath of architecture can be.

The feeling reminds me of cinema’s set designers. They create and recreate moments within frames that were not there or might have been there days, years or centuries before.

When I am in the cities of countries, and countries of continents I am uniting everything I know to make in one single frame: a chemical compound that is all brought together in a single set designers storyboard.

I am always reveling in the moment:

I was standing in Seville, thinking about matadors and bullfights: I was imagining the tragedy of Carmen: I looked deep into my lens: I considered the math, science and technology: The shutter was released: a single photograph was made.

Now let’s be honest: if that is not nuts, nothing is.

The day I saw the lead photograph in this essay, I remember taking a few steps forward. I remember asking myself not to move too quickly. I remember thinking about where I should begin the framing. I remember thinking about where I should crop and of course stop.

My feet moved in so many directions: I just laughed out loud. I was so excited to snippety snap, snap that I was literally dancing in place: My body was completely still: yet my mind and body felt a torrent of passions that was totally out of control: The moment was frozen!

From somewhere came the drumming in Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing”. I danced a bit: