The New Yorker
When I was about nine years old, I sat in the rear-deck of a “Tiger Sunbeam” Grand Prix pace car: The race began and I was the one watching the racing cars gear up to catch me: “Vroom” raced the two and three cylinder cars: I couldn’t believe how fast I was moving: Actually in hindsight I felt as if I was in some adult alternative universe: The sensation of standing still: The earth rotates behind me: The earth rotates in front of me: The figure eight race track became a blur: My future seemed to be patterned unrealistically: I became a human being at nine:
The little boy’s life is mine today: I race around cities: I never feel as if I am moving: Physics is explaining how I see: My captures are from the heart:
There is a setting on the modern digital cameras where you half press and decide later: It can be called “dragging the shutter”: In essence, the photographer may decide later: For me, one million images I have dragged from my genesis until what might be requiem:
My entire world fades: My past captures lay like animated blurs: An infinite amount of celluloid and digital images circle my head like Road Runners skirting ahead of Wile E. Coyotes.
34th Stree West
A well known editor( now deceased) and a famous architectural critic approached me on different days with similar ideas: Secret cities: Los Angeles and New York secrets:
It was as if I became the Jaguar espying the Orinoco crocodile: Something so desirable: Something to desirously sink my teeth into: Something to conquer: My passion for a dream seemed within an eyelash: My spirits were rekindled: I had this thrilling dream to tell: Visual stories would highlight my passions: To share secrets: Not mine alone: For a few seconds I could be that Jaguar: The camera would capture what others have seen: The startling possibilities of these revelations compelled me to whisper: “Shhhh”! I will be capturing not just cities but the secrets that become: The books died soon after the propositions: Like all furious fires, the ambers remain: New secrets materialized: The secrets my camera capture would be realized not just today but tomorrow as well:
If for one fraction of time you stood where I had once seen: If for one fraction of a second if you stood along my eyes as I captured the works of 40 Pritzkers: Thousands of ideas that became: If only you would lend me your eyes: I will share not only for what I capture, but from where I may have stood.
David Smith At One Vanderbilt
A blind person has grand ideas as if Fantasia lives inside of his/her dreams and memories: Fantasia is a visual concept that carries my eyes daily: What the world of Saarinen’s, Wright’s, Niemeyer’s, Gehry’s, Piano’s and Hadid’s might be: This is not a placebo from the two cities’ books that faded: This world with the hundreds of architects and thousands of built architecture has become a treasure trove of dreams, memories and secrets: I share what I see from where I stood:
I have seen The Secret Garden: It is not mine: It has been in the mind or reason of millions: It has become my Fantasia, my camera’s secret: My captures: My shares:
The Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes from São Paulo walked me through his city: His hands flew aggressively like a protest marcher begging for me to see his truths: His eyes were my guides to his secrets: To this Pritzker recipients real life Fantasia: It was a share that I felt was a secret for me: The way I captured his secrets became embedded in my mind: The memory of my lenses.
Secrets come in many forms: Take a few seconds to do the math.
Herzog and De Meuron