Detail of AT&T Center, Chicago | Sitting outside my hotel room
When I was about twenty years of age, I was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles along California’s Highway One. Just south of Big Sur, a glint of something foreign caught my eye. I pulled over and grabbed my camera. I quickly realized this ramshackle shack sitting idly between two trees abutting the beckoning Pacific Ocean.
As I got within arms reach I found myself staring at thousands of Monarch Butterflies clinging to the trees and the shack facade. I could not distinguish between a Monarch Wanderer or the Tiger Monarch. I just knew that this Monarch phenomenon was a true color vision. It was a comical moment. They paused because of me and I because of them. It was like a movie western, who would draw first.
This rest stop in their migratory journey was an eye popping present to these young eyes. It was hallucinatory. I quickly took some snaps and proceeded to the cliff. A sunny gaze over the Pacific is one of life’s best treats. I made my way back to the cabin. I pushed open the front door. I stepped inside. My feet felt a wee bit of crackling. I froze. In every direction there were thousands of Monarchs like wallpaper covering every inch of space. From ceiling to floor, wall to wall, I was alone in this two room universe. My camera snapped wildly. I had recognized the sylvan charm that mysteriously entered my mind that day. It felt like a paramedic’s electrical jolt. My eyes espied untethered light streaking across the universe. My eyes imagined the northern auroras whispering secrets across the skies. Years later I discovered that those precious images have inconceivably disappeared. What has stayed with me till this day is that visual moments in photography are irreplaceable.
The above is obviously filled with a range of passions. Why not confess to the reasons photography has touched my heart. My cameras have been attached to my eyes for forty years. I have engaged the design of architecture from top to bottom. I have walked along side of its path, and caressed the veneer as if I was caressing a canvas. Magic sometimes hides in plain sight, you merely have to feel its pulse. You have not created a photograph until your mind finds itself in a tizzy.
A recent Tokyo commission from the fabulous Kengo Kuma allowed to to shoot his works, and commune where Japan’s modern architecture’s soul lived.
I raced afoot across Tokyo breathlessly (not unlike Godard’s Jean-Paul Belomondo).
Kisho Kurokawa’s Capsule Tower
I needed to freeze frame Kisho Kurokawa’s Capsule Tower before nightfall. I scattered hundreds of Japanese pedestrians in my path while racing against the descending shadows to capture the light before darkness on Kenzō Tange’s Yoyogi National Gymnasium. I remember the morning I realized that I would only have one opportunity to photograph Tange’s Sekiguchi Catholic Church sans people, I paid a taxi driver handsomely to arrive before Mass.
Kenzo Tange’s Yoyogi National Gymnasium
Kenzo Tange’s Sekiguchi Catholic Church
While on commission, I own “god’s” light. The time I take is the time I have to discover what the structure has to offer, what the architect might be suggesting. But while recording centuries of the built environment, sometimes the camera only has seconds.
Louis Kahn”s Bangladesh National Parliment
Commissions fortunately have enabled me to travel across continents. That is the way I have encountered greatness. I met Louis Kahn’s eyes in Bangladesh, Oscar Niemeyer in Brazil, and Frank Lloyd Wright in America and many more breathless design celebrations.
Oscar Niemeyer’ Casa das Canoas in Rio de Janeiro
When the need arises to capture history’s architectural moments, countless treasures, I pause merely to realize my good fortunes.
The untethered expressions brings me back full circle to the resting Monarchs. Because of that lasting California memory, I have wrapped my eyes around architecture the way they have wrapped their wings along the lowliest ramshackle shack. They too paused on their way to a greater moment.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum New York