The Obits: One of the great archives of world history..

July 30, 2021

The one obituary in the New York Times. The day, the hour, the second I saw the obituary for the famed Surrealist Joan Miro, I realized the history of mankind lives in the pages of the obits.

There is something magical about obituaries. Whether all the information printed is true or not, you begin to realize that not just that lives are celebrated, but the amazing universe that people come from. It is like following a human groundwater to see where everyone comes together. There is geography, family, education, poverty, wealth, just plain old DNA.

I was already engaged in a quasi agenda to photograph a history of artists. But now I was compelled to find my own Quattrocento. I needed to make my own Vasari’s “Lives of the Artists”. So knowing I couldn’t have my Quattrocento, or my Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson Cornwall commune or any other lives before my time. I tried to record groupings of portraits by their lineage, titles, styles, happenings.

Was I always successful? Not always. But the agendas gave me a shooting star to follow. I could literally record that arc of the lives of artists by where their place of embankment into the fine art worlds found their accelerator. For example, I didn’t get all of the Coenties Slip artists. But I found Jack Youngerman, Ellsworh Kelly and more.

I didn’t get all of the people that hung out at the Cedar Tavern, But Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Howard Kanovitz, Philip Pavia….And so it began.

I remember when I surrendered my eyes to portraiture for ten years…

Heroes are spirited untouchable friends. When they have touched our hearts we are forever forever bound to lives lived. But is it a dream?

My portraits need a moment, a breath of life. I need some whisper of history when I enter my portrait sessions. I need more than watching the artist Larry Rivers devour his white bread American cheese and mayo sandwich while engrossed in the Brady Bunch. Was there more to the sculptor Reuben Nakian nipping on his Meatloaf on white bread with catsup and a glass of milk. I don’t need the dark secrets. But I do wish to know. It helps position the dots of the human experience. It indicates that you are talking to more than just the subject at hand. You are speaking to the artists’ universe.

The artists were in a sense heroes because of their labor of love for arts sake

and for our love for what they produced. The artists I met and photographed were famous, infamous and mostly unknown beyond the borders of their canvas.

The Sprint

I didn’t know it, but there has been an army of photographers making portraits of artists from the outset of photography’s history. My guess is that if you needed to engage in the spirit of creativity and the science of an art, whom better than to focus on than artists.

Yes artistry falls into dozens of categories. That preset, set me afire and I found myself sprinting across cities with Nikon in hand to inhabit the moment that the artists offered me. I discovered that hundreds of artists were lying in wait for me. I for them, they for me.

Do you know the good years when you are in them?

I have absolutely zero reason to look back with regret. In fact I scaled mountains to come to terms with the respect for a time past. It was a crazy ride. The personal reveal is an exasperated scream with absolutely no sound. I lived every day for tomorrow. I never knew who I was truly meeting. It was always a race to get to the next day, for the next moment. The love for that moment when I exited the studio of XY and Z changed my life every single time. My life was altered by what I saw, who I photographed and the nature of change from experience. To say they were amazing years is to shortchange the experience. The experience was my raison d’etre.

Posthumous

Certainly, looking back over the thousands of faces who sat before me, I realized over time as I matured in life, that it wasn’t always revelatory. Sometimes it was disappointing, sometimes ho-hum. But when the moment resonated I realized I achieved greatness. It wasn’t greatness because of the photograph. It was greatness because the main reason I needed to become a photographer was realized in a shutter speed setting.

My snippets with Jean Dubuffet, Marc Chagall and Francis Bacon and other whales that got away were magnificent moments. But when they died, I read the obits. My life looking for my own Quattrocento seemed to be realized. I sadly realize that I have missed more than I should have. I missed making an asterisk in photography’s history.

I have to hurry now. I need to surrender my eyes. I need to sprint. I need to dance. The good years are all of my years with camera in hand. There is a bit more of dna to discover.

A Century of Iconic Artists…Jasper Johns

July 09, 2021

I remember days and faces. But I share my blogs to remember names and places. Staring into space with a bit of askance, I begin to imagine what a half century of photography will look like. So many people wanted to know what my camera has witnessed. I merely wanted to experience life’s challenges. That is what I have relished most. Now you can see what my camera saw. I remember one day walking down a curious street near Central St. Giles in London. I had a bit of yawn in me. Looking through the corridors of eighteenth century London real estate I could see the colors of architect Renzo Pianos new complex. I quickly picked up my pace. I passed the George Frideric Handel-Jimi Hendrix building on Brook Street. Mesmerizing musical notes filled the dreamy skies. My exhausted feet began to feel a bit of a pulse. I moved over to Denmark Street. As I momentarily turned my gaze, I saw my reflection in the window of a guitar shop. The street was filled with music shops. Denmark Street is host to ghosts of Rock and Roll (Bowie, Stones, Hendrix, Beatles and more). The swirling Rock faces enticed and teased me to play air guitar. My heart was brimming with a new found passion as I imagined jamming with Hendrix on his majestry “Electric Ladyland” album. My feet had liftoff. I was inspired again. The vivid dream came to a halt. My eyes widened as I looked beyond my reflection and saw a painted American flag among a wall of guitars. Certainly an oddity. It was a Jasper Johns’ flag series poster. I emotionally found myself in a cultural columnar vortex. My woven world of cultural phenomenons who have graced my films were appearing before my eyes. My portrait of Jasper Johns was seemingly suddenly filling the storefront reflection. I know this was a wild flurry of past and present playing tricks. What better reason to play air guitar 🎸 awhile longer. Maybe a bit of “Purple Haze”. Maybe I will see a bit more magical realism. Early magic in my life came to fruition when I met the famed art dealer Leo Castelli for a portrait session. In my career, I have photographed more than fifty art dealers. But Leo was special. One of the first things he said when we met was “what can I do for you?” Leo’s stable of artists was historically one of the great panoply of art and artists in the second half of the 20th century. He represented Johns, Warhol, Kelly, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Ruscha, and so many more. Our first afternoon together after the shooting session, he pulled out the proverbial silver platter. He said “I will pay you X amount$$ to photograph the artists I represent: The Beatles were referred to as the fab 4, I got the fab 25 and more. Leo’s gesture was beyond princely at that time in my career. I had struck gold. Today, that past life might look glorious. I was trying to climb Mt. Everest or merely get recognized in the photography world. I hoofed it and hoofed it from session to session. So many of my New York art subjects were here and there: Soho or 57th street, Brooklyn, Queens, uptown, downtown. I would tote my equipment and my portfolio up and down the stairs of one loft building or another. I looked exhausted everywhere I went. But then came Jasper. I was running late for my photo session. I couldn’t find a taxi. Essex and Houston was a hike. I arrived at the studio. I wasn’t prepared to see what I could see. This was my first bank/studio! Who has a bank to paint in? Jasper Johns. I entered the studio huffing and puffing. The studio assistant let me know that Jasper was upset. But for one of the best minutes in my life, nothing mattered. I spun round and round. My bags looked like copter propeller blades spinning. I let my eyes roam the expansive conical shaped ceiling. Suddenly there was a cool breeze emanating from a mysterious place. Apparently a draft filtering downward from the ceiling was cooling my anxious emotional jets. I seemed to have found peace of mind under an imagined 10,000 acre groves of conical canopy of cedars of Lebanon from Biblical times. I was home in this element. I was alive. Jasper Johns one of the worlds most famous artists, walked up to me. We shook hands. He managed the most gratifying words one person can embrace: “You are one of us, that is why I am doing this”. The words at that time had been spoken a few times. It took me years to understand them. I have photographed this incredible artist a couple of times. The first session was filled with youthful exuberance. The second ten years later felt like two old warhorses reminiscing. It was the first session where I realized that my tribal dancing throughout the artist’ space was about conjuring ghosts from present and past memories for my visual ideas. Memories come to life. Ideas follow. We, like many of my prior portrait sessions spoke about the art world figures I was fortunate to have photographed. More importantly he said, “You have seen so much. A treasure trove of artists lives live in your head”. Yes the lives of artists do live in my head and on my film. The images have become like a vintage wine. I feel the depth of time, the history of a life lived. It is an enduring memory, it was a magical time.

The Company You Keep

June 24, 2021

A Gathering of Minds

TED FOUNDER Richard Saul Wurman:

Close your eyes. Imagine you are on a journey accompanying me to see the cultural world extraordinaire my eyes have by luck visited the past forty years. It may not be a unique experience, but it is mine.

I remember reading Geoff Dyer’s “But Beautiful”. I remember thinking that my world encountered a similar range of creative forces. The faces and places were/are the zeitgeist of generations. I feel my photography world is transcendentally akin to Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki journey in a slight way. I too traveled with the benefit of the defining currents. I too benefited as any explorer would by a few mishaps along the way. Like all explorers you live or die by luck. My camera as I explained to Frank Gehry one night, is now merely a witness to a history of architecture. I am fortunate to be able to record in still frames whatever matters.

When I first met Richard Wurman, it was at the Gehry Strategic Alliance. The event in New York was intended to see if they could launch a program to essentially share a cloud based software program for architects around the world. Twenty-Five or so of the world’s great architecture and technology minds and practitioners (Richard Wurman, Frank Gehry, David Childs, David Rockwell, Moshe Safdie, Greg Lynn, Wolf Prix and Zaha Hadid and more)gathered. My camera was invited to record.

The next time I met Richard, was at his Newport Rhode Island birthday celebration. This time Yo-Yo Ma performed a short piece in Richard’s honor. Frank Gehry, Moshe Safdie and thirty or so guests attended. My camera was there merely to record history. There are only a handful of people who may bring together a collection of aces at one time. Maybe Herbert Muschamp comes to mind when he organized a rebuild 9/11 gathering of architectural giants(whom I photographed).

The next time I met with Richard Wurman was at his home in Miami. Miami was like a “Lost in Translation” adventure. Miami is a place I want to like, but not sure how to navigate. As I began my portrait session, I found myself trying to imagine what was going on inside of his brain. It was like watching a Whirling Butterfly attracting some of the worlds most colorful and intellectual pollinators. I was just a camera, not a pollinator. I tried to explain to Richard while shooting that my mind was better suited to a one on one conversation with a building or an inanimate object than an enjoyable sparring match with him. I had to remind him how I almost swallowed Yo-Yo Ma’s ear trying to get to the heart of his unearthly talents. I told him that my life was like the Looney Tunes’ Road Runner: I have befallen everything the Road Runner has aside from the “Beep Beep”.

Yo-Yo Ma and Frank Gehry at Richard Wurman’s celebration in Newport Rhode Island

We spent the sweltering afternoon aside his pool with swords drawn. He danced through each subject with so much more wily grace than I could muster. I am certain it has something to do with the Whirling Butterfly pollinating in his brain.

The company he keeps, is the lure. He gathers minds like Nabakov would collect butterflies. He belongs on the pages of Aesop’s Fables. He has planted the seeds for a community of ideas. Those ideas have been shared throughout the world for better or worse.

Sometimes when I reflect on my photo sessions with Richard, I hear in my mind the Miles Davis collaboration with Louis Malle’s “Elevator to the Gallows”. It is the kind of remembrance that is jazz, my jazz.

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Visual Feasts

Jeff Koons and Little Anthony and the Imperials Enjoy a Moment Together

June 04, 2021

I remember having an extra bounce in my step as I made my way down to the Gold Coast of Lower Fifth Avenue into the Washington Mews. I was to photograph the artist Jeff Koons. Koons was soon to be “Koons”. He was to be our contemporary Warhol.

I was nearing the end of my artists portrait series. Of course I didn’t know the end was near. I had photographed a thousand people who spoke about what it meant to be an artist everyday. Each was swimming towards being a creative genius. For me in that time it was pure visual enlightenment.

Jeff Koons immediately greeted me and quickly led me through the studio and up to watch his assistant. She was pumping away on a life-cycle wearing black leotards backwards. The straps hardly covered her nipples.The full pronounced affect of her large breasts seemed intentionally exposed for my startled eyes. Koons was having a child like laugh at my expense. He wore a wolf’s fully enameled grin. I enjoyed the view, but “sometimes you just know when something is rotten in the state of Denmark”.

The “…Mews” space was a dream location. It was small for what Jeff would soon become. So the tour through the space was a bit like a gallery showing: something to behold on every wall. Koons was anxious for me to see what I could see. After a few minutes he said “As a photographer I think you might appreciate this”. He pulled out an envelope of 8x10 transparencies. He suddenly morphed back into the lascivious wolf. He growled, “Take a look and tell me what you see”.

The images were of Jeff about to penetrate his wife Cicciolina (the stage name for the porn star Ilona Staller). With a widening smile and equally enjoying eyes, he proudly asked “what do you see? Don’t you see how endowed I am? I am huge don’t you think?”. Music drives most of what lives in my brain. I was certain Koons was waiting with bated breath for me to sing Little Anthony’s “Goin’ Out Of My Head”. Click on the link! For your listening pleasure!!!https://open.spotify.com/track/538IUnkjiDgU9Ndhf1wN2f?si=M5mzgPRvQZyNzTz8bDizzAImagine Koons’ expression as I glanced inadvertently at his crotch.

I casually uttered a few “whatevers” and then I ushered him into my shooting session!

The rest of the morning was a quite enjoyable snippety snap-snap with my 6x7 Pentax. Sometimes the unique camera shape breaks the silence like a howitzer, but creates appreciation from the subject for its size…and back to sex we go!

I rarely have an uneventful shooting session. When I let my camera snap, it seems to be like a divining tool for some sort therapeutic revelation. Everyone brings something to the table usually unexpectedly. Everyone talks. I am the beneficiary. So after 40 years I remember moments that seem hallucinatory in hindsight. The moments become like a segment from the famed CBS announcer Walter Cronkite citing “You Were There”. And so I was.

My Jeff Koons episode was great because Jeff didn’t hold anything back. I think we had mutual respect for each other. I know he was wildly participating. There is nothing a photographer enjoys more than an active and willing subject. Today he is one of the most famous artists on the planet. He has a home inside my archives.

Day after day, year after year I internally reminisce about a life past. I share it with you because the names and contributions by these creative masters have made an impact on me, you and most of our western cultural world.

Below are a few of the names and places to follow in the coming months just for the fun of it. Some stories will be romantic, hilarious and adventurous, but all of the episodes will reveal how I see, how I make photographs and how the whole experience has affected my life.

Architecture Whispers

May 20, 2021

If I May Speak From The Heart, I Will Tell You A Story

I remember emerging from the ransacked above ground tomb in (The Cities of the Dead) New Orleans Saint Louis Cemetery. Danger prevails. Blackness lingered. I blinked my bleary eyes repeatedly. I needed to see the light. A moving shadow alerted me to a serendipitous moment standing before my lens. A unique shard of light led me to a momentarily unknown opportunity. My eyes, quietly excited, engaged the unknown. The camera responded to the angle of repose. I imagined that a special moment just whispered hello. I heard my shutter snap the unique vantage point. Every picture should feel like this.

Architecture often whispers to this photographer. Most times a magicians wand cast a spell spreading fairy dust upon my eyes. Photographs then becomes very clear. The whispers become revelations about my quixotic freedom. The magical whispers reveal unseen characters in architecture, I pounce. I share these whispering spells, because I am sharing past dreams and future dreams regarding the magic in photographing architecture.

Nobody dances a jig more lively than I do when I have snippety snapped-snapped the images that makes me not only embrace the captured image, but allows me to celebrate why I became a photographer.

There is a possibility that the “Olympics” will be played in Japan this summer. It reminds me of my talks with architect Kengo Kuma. We had discussed the possibility of photographing his Olympic Stadium design. A few years ago while I was in Japan for other Kuma projects, I passed by the stadium footprint one hundred times to imagine how I would make something unique when the time arrived to stand shoulder to shoulder with millions laser fixed with camera/phone in hand. My mind seemed engineered by a drone searching aloft for discovery. I allowed my future dream to imagine what Richard Schulman might do in the moments to be. I wanted to hold my breath until I could yell “I gotcha”. My successful photographs are always followed by “I gotcha”. Sometimes I need a motivation. I never know what the motivation will be until I realize I am drawn to what might be akin to escaping from being alone in darkness, to awakening to new found light.

My mind circled around the Yusuhara bridge before this day incalculable times. Yusuhara became a new awakening for my camera. I remember standing on the banks of the Yusuhara river. I dreamed of crossing the river to the forest. I could disappear into a new found darkness. Echoing sounds of Wild Boar and Black Bears and more wildness dared me to crossover to what might be my end.

I wanted to confront my inspirational fear and engage wild animals face to face. Maybe magical realism was my real life. Fear pulled me as if on a leash. I began to wander to the other side of the bridge. I unexpectedly stepped back, and magically heard what was certainly whispered “look up”. I found the bridge I needed to see. I could step away from the river and breathe, “I gotcha”.

There is always a curious awakening to what may be the shot that should be made. This is not about the best photograph, but the process of discovery that enlivens every time I have stopped to recognize the experience that photography provides.

Fifty thousand examples live in my archives. So many frames have the architect’s noted surprise attached to the image. Where will it end, I pray it never does

Frank Gehry: “I Never saw this angle before” of Disney Hall

Thom Mayne: “How did you know to include the ball” Diamond Ranch High School

Billie Tsien, Tod Williams: “You must have waited a long time to get this angle…” New York Folk Art Museum

da Vinci and Me: Guardians of Art History

April 29, 2021

J.Carter Brown and da Vinci at the National Gallery in D.C

If I could conjure up my literary heroes for creative assistance while scribbling my blogs, It would be like tasting a four layer cake from the bottom-up: delightfully messy. It is as silly as conjuring up my own funeral march led by Yo-Yo Ma or Led Zeppelin. My mind like the cake can be delightfully messy.

When I stopped photographing people, I realized those moments became chapters of my history. Fifty thousand of those transparencies became building blocks for life. I remember some with such joy, as if I was dancing naked atop a giant blue whale amid fifty foot waves.

In a small way, I am very much like Orson Welles. When asked who he would like to meet, he said Mao Zedong. When asked why, he said that he just wanted to meet the most interesting people. I did not realize it at the time, but thousands of people wanted to introduce me to people they knew would be interesting for me. I was not mature enough to know that my early career was emulating a family tree. The tree became a mini art history and a virtual “Who’s Who” cultural landscape for those years. The myriad of stranger’s faces from my art world sessions, looked like the personification of an ornamental Maple tree in fall bloom. I was Zelig’s ghost.

My white Converse Jack Purcells squished, squished and squished through the the empty corridors at The National Gallery in D.C. All the likely heroes winced (Van Gogh, Picasso, Rubens, Renoir, Monet) as I squished by. John Le Carré’s number one rule: to be a successful spy, no squishing. I squished. The larger the rooms, the louder my shoes would sound. I should have removed my shoes. It was Monday, who would know? It was just me on my way to meet one of the great museum directors in America, J. Carter Brown.

Philipe de Montebello Director of Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC

Boris Piotrovsky Director of The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg

Museum Directors have a unique institutional role; They need to be exemplary executors of the collections. The guardians were/are always names (Philipe de Montebello, Boris Piotrovsky are good examples) that represented evolution and stability in modern art history. My privilege was to have photographed a dozen or so. Each and everyone shared their time and museums like a holiday gift.

When I arrived at the appointed (meeting place) painting, I had this electrifying epiphany. This must have been just as Picasso felt when he walked into the Musée du Trocadéro for the first time: “My greatest artistic emotions were felt when the sublime beauty of sculptures made by anonymous artists from Africa suddenly appeared to me. These works by a man of religious faith, passionate and strictly logical, are the most powerful and beautiful the human imagination has produced.” I felt as if I was walking in harmonious stride with Picasso and all his creative powers as I gazed into the eyes of a magnificent daVinci, Leonardo da Vinci.

Finally it was da Vinci and me. No guards, no authorities. Just us. It was silent love. Not even a squish, as I stood in quietude. This was not a dream come true. It was a face to face reckoning with greatness. I danced with boundless energy sans my Purcells, my ambitions knew no boundaries. The only other time I danced in such fashion was when, following a portrait session with then Senator John Kerry, he asked if there was something he could do for me while I was in Washington D.C. My request was simple. The Senator organized a private tour at the National Gallery’s Paul Gauguin Retrospective.

Carter Brown walked into the room. I am not an historian, but I think only a few people (Vartan Gregorian who I also photographed comes to mind) had an equal impact on a cultural sector as Brown did. The National Gallery was among the top of the heap. The Director was very proud of the da Vinci acquisition. Since “Ginerva de’ Benci” was the only da Vinci in America, why not celebrate greatness.

I positioned my subject. For the next couple of hours we talked about everything the National Gallery has to offer and everything photography has to offer. Gracious and conversational, and time together have been a great gift to this photographer. Carter Brown was all of those things.

Reflecting on my D.C. experiences, I can only embrace the optical opportunities that came to fruition, and be grateful for my aimless wanderings that became more than I could have imagined.

The deafening sounds of silence swirled through my mind as I exited the museum from my portrait session. Everything great had just happened. Plus, like Picasso I had my mind opened to the boundless possibilities that great art can trigger.

da Vinci J.Carter Brown and Richard Schulman

Art Collectors Dreams

April 15, 2021

When we allow our minds to careen wildly through our ancient memories, genuine treasures appear. I think that is why I remembered my drive around and through the bends of Sunset Blvd in a 65’ Mustang. I had a sense of airlift like a take off. I turned off on to Greenway Drive in Beverly Hills with grand expectations towards a treasured destiny. I landed at the mansion of art collector extraordinaire Max Palevsky.

I remembered strolling down Park Ave. feeling like a delicate Borzoi with a gait from the gods. I was tickled like a Ken Kesey induced fantasy about streaming confetti of billions of one dollar bills swirling from the skies on to the Avenue. I stepped into the lobby of art collector extraordinaire Gerald Cantors building.

Both experiences would eventually make me feel overwhelmed by the mass of unattainable wealth winking at me as my hosts waltzed me through their shrines to art history. It was part of the hundreds of moments where the rooms were occupied by me, my subject and the ultimate displays of modern art history. I never missed an opportunity to caress the canvases and the sculptures that seemed to be begging for my eyes to love.

Many years before Ben Stiller’s “Night at the Museum”, there was the animated film “Closed Mondays”. I used to imagine I was the main character; a fat squishy mound of clay dancing through the world’s greatest museums. Today, the animated character sits quietly behind my right ear whispering riotous stuff as I enter fabulous rooms of art. It is a bit like having Jimmy Stewart’s “Harvey” as a friend. The collections come alive. I dance. The subjects wonder when I am to begin my photography.

When I remember these moments it feels like my career was like a run on a Wham-o Slip and Slide. Certainly it was not always that adolescent. But decades later I have realized that this personal and photography immersion into collector’s fortresses of private worlds with ecstatic collections had fantastic life altering affects for my life as a young photographer.

The two powerful collectors shared a passion for beauty and possession among the world’s great art community. They were both champions in their industries. They shared as tastemasters do, an eye for similar art. Yes Cantor was among the crowned champs of Rodin. But Palevsky had an eye for some Rodin too. I was given entrèe to their treasures.

Collectors can be like John Fowles(The Collector) obsessively passionate. They may embrace their possessions like a child would his/her Raggedy Andy/Ann. They may privately stir the heavens like James Cagney’s “White Heat”, “Made it Ma, top of the world”. But for whatever the art collector may be, when they have shared his/her passions with me, It really doesn’t matter why they covet acquisitions like precious possessions. I am the privileged soul who gets to sing to their beauty.

When I entered Palevsky’s Spanish styled home, the first thing he did after “hello” was to march me over to the Paul Outerbridge Kodachrome nude and begged me for my opinion.

Of course I knew the photographers work well. But it is an oddity when collectors and curators want an opinion from me. I was a photographer of fabulous art personalities. Why that assumes I am a savvy genius I have not a clue. But oddly, I know what I know. I think my passionate swirl of words won Max over more than my feeble intellectual discourse.

When I first encountered the Jawlensky, it snagged my eyes for the portrait I needed to make. Love and passion mingle in a room of collectibles in the most intellectual sensual marriage. As we strolled through eye popping Leger, Picasso, and an array of centuries of art, I motioned Palevsky to stand where I needed him to stand: Palevsky and the beautiful Jawlensky. I shushed Max with a wave. This was the snap.

Cantor walked me right over to Rodin’s Thinker. I fell in love with the shadow it made.

Just a glimpse was all I needed to know that some part of the “Thinker” was to be my snippety snap snap for the day. Rodin ruled the moment. But Leger, Picasso, Matisse and more made for an art lovers dream.

Two days, a year apart. But not a square inch of the extraordinaire expansive homes didn’t reveal art history’s history. Treasures lived in these homes that collectors and curators may never know about. I was privileged to espy some secrets.

I am not a documentary photographer. I am totally aware of the missed moments in these environments. I probably needed to record more of the art history that lived on these walls. But I did record my moment and so much more.

When you consider that you have one snap in mind available. You realize there was never a rat a tat tat like a machine gun. There is merely the howitzer in mind ready to unload one single frame.

@schulmanphotography Gerald Cantor with his Rodins

Paul in Pink

March 29, 2021

#Paul Cadmus#artist #Realist — #Paul Cadmus
#artist #Realist

One day like a fledgling adolescent with no agenda, I sauntered through New York’s sweltering summer afternoon. The parade of tourists, and the everyday economy made their way from store to store, across streets and...

I stole a glance at myself from a Fifth Avenue storefront reflection. I looked like one of the prisoners who fell out of the sweat boxes in “The Bridge on the River Kwai”. I was the sweltering embodiment of Manhattan’s 98 degrees in the shade. Unless I am almost naked on an ocean beach, I hate the heat.

For decades I have witnessed the citizenry of the five boroughs converge into Manhattan. They have come to New York’s Broadway to revel in the revered as they march among the “Canyon of Heroes”. They have come to stroll among the city’s cultural diversity thronged along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue celebrating every holiday festival and parade. Streamers and flags always seemed to be reigning atop those city avenues embodying our spirited past. It is a compelling way that we interweave our reverence for New York’s past, present and future histories. Sometimes it felt like walking through Childe Hassam’s Impressionist flag painting.

I was awakened from this solo reverie by an annoying clippety-clop, clippety-clop accompanied by “Schulman! Schulman!”. This old man waving at me, was dodging Fifth Avenue traffic with a ton of spring in his gait. By old man, I mean I was in my thirties and the artist Paul Cadmus was just shy of ninety.

It is not often I see someone greet me with such wide-eyed exuberance. I was overwhelmed. He told me that he saw me from across the street. He wanted to thank me for our portrait session. His art dealer had just shown him the portrait I had shot. He went on and on while holding and shaking my hand. I wasn’t sure if I was fainting from the heat or the pure unadulterated kindness. The moment had me in a pool of sweat, blushing at ten times 98 degrees.

I have photographed a constellation of art world luminaries who make up a unique niche of the western art world. Paul Cadmus was one star with a bit of realist magic preening through his canvases. He arrived into the art world mix wading through complex life experiences on his road from penniless to accomplished. In those pre-war and after days, Paul Cadmus got around.

He never rose to the stature of Edward Hopper, but he climbed like Jackson Pollock and others through what I refer to as “the system”: the Art Students League, The National Academy of Design and more. A bit of nepotism may have contributed to his rise. His sister married the impresario/tastemaker Lincoln Kirstein. Still, Paul was a fabulous artist who led a fabulous life.

For 10 years I lived engulfed in a most especial universe that enabled me to meet and photograph strands of artists that stretched almost one hundred years. I had made arrangements with art gallery dealers to photograph “their” artists. Castelli, Sonnabend, Emmerich and so many more shared theirs rosters. It was a fun and educational time. My Paul Cadmus session reminded me of my good times.

I was sitting in the gallery’s office/viewing room. It seemed like an eternity for Paul Cadmus to enter the room. The room was an amalgamation of a cheap motel and an airline boarding area. Everything seemed waning and in need of a face lift. I was too hot to be patient. Yet I waited.

I found a way to bide my time by celebrating the shards of light crisscrossing the art encumbered walls. Shards of light came from the eastern morning. The intensity of shadows and light reminded me of a Robert Morris sculpture but in light. My zen therapy came in the guise of mind games. I sat and entertained my myself making photography stills with my eyes.

Paul walked in. My eyes scrolled down from his hairline to the bottom of his chin and back up to his eyes. He owned the most gorgeous skin I have seen on a man of any age. Yet, just maybe it was his luminescent shoulder length silver-haired pony tail that dazzled me the most. He was elegant. He was purposeful. “What should we do Mr. Schulman”.

I had not previsualized a single shot. My mind was referencing Holbein, or maybe Rembrandt. Art history seemed a logical place to find my motivation. I didn’t struggle too long. I flipped through my lighting gels, needing one tiny spark of inspiration. Pink had been successful one time before. I flipped the switch. My lights swallowed up the room. I saw what we all have seen in Paul: A man fully present and alive in his skin.

The day was awkward for me. The artist was captivating in so many ways. The heat had worn me down. All I had was the mere strength and the experience to allow the subject’s eyes guide me to the watering hole of discovery. I followed his eyes towards the picture that needed to be taken. It was an event that had occurred a few times in my career. History was made. Cadmus was one of my most fulfilling sessions as a photographer.

In the end, the lights dictated my actions. The lights ruled the day. A few snaps later I thanked him. I ran off into the avenues. New York’s sweltering heat was no match for the cool calm that stole my heart.

#PaulCadmus#Painter #artist #realist — #PaulCadmus
#Painter #artist #realist

The Halls of Science: The Nobel Laureates And More: Part One

March 04, 2021

#Darwin Centre: #Natural History Museum #CFMoller #architects

I remember many portrait sessions with scientists (Nobel laureates and more).Collectively they reminded me of a character from Woody Allen’s Bullets over Broadway. Dianne Wiest’s character would cushion her hands up against John Cusack’s character and whisper in quiet decibels “Don’t Speak, Don’t Speak”.

I always thought the scientists were afraid I would try to have a mano y mano about their work. I was obviously not up to the task. Dozens of scientists later, I realized I had been thrillingly enlightened through osmosis by my one on one experiences. My mind remembers those geniuses fondly, but mostly like an encounter with the whirling Taz (Tasmanian Devil from the Looney Tunes).

I remember one morning driving from Los Angeles to La Jolla. The dreamy California wave sets along the coast pushed my mind into a bit of the divine. It was a bit too early to see (even for me) the world through Hunter S.Thompsons’ kaleidoscope eyes. So I dreamed of dreams to come until I arrived at my destination.

I was nearing the Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman’s Neuroscience Institute.

I did imagine as I drove up the La Jolla hills seeing Patrick McGoohan from the television series “The Prisoner”. He seemed to be wildly waving “turn back!! danger!”.

His Sci-fi series was among the most visually enigmatic television series. This Neuroscience Institute reminded me of the “Prisoner”. It was mind popping beautiful and alluring like science fiction tv/movie sets all wrapped up in one.

My imagination conjures up the bizarre with the snap of a finger. I am sort of inexplicably a living “Walter Mitty”.

I received the V.I.P treatment from my host. Dr. Edelman was a prince. He was famous for (among other things) his discovery of the structure of antibody molecules. Yes of course, I was incapable of comprehending his achiements. But like the thousands of portraits I have made, it has always been about making a human map about people on the planet who had made a difference.

I think at first Edelman was a bit suspicious about how I was going to capture his portrait and his institute. I was very much in love with his surroundings. I did not at first let on, that the experience felt a bit like the movies “Ex Machina” meets “Frankenstein” meets “The Time Machine”.

I have always been excited by what may be hidden in plain sight in the “Halls of Science”I have photographed. There is so much mystery and excitement to behold. I think my camera was tickled with anticipation to create even more mystery. I kept Dianne Wiest in mind, and began to make some pictures that the Institutes’ architects (Billie Tsien and Tod Williams) and Dr Edelman would appreciate far beyond my enthusiasm.

#NeuroscienceInstitute #LaJolla #Architect #BillieTsien #TodWilliams

Later that afternoon, I drove down the hillside. When I got to the bottom I paused long enough to reflect on my day. I went for a quick swim at Black’s Beach. I saw my day as an accumulation of emotional layers bursting with excitement. I dove through the breaking waves relishing my decades of photography.

:::::::::

I remember one day, flying over Switzerland. I was on my way to photograph the scientist Carl Djerassi. He created the key ingredient for the Oral Contraceptive (The Pill).

I was pre-visualizing my portrait session. I began to think about my photography experiences. Every time I snap a picture all of my memories and ideas are compacted into one frame. In a visual way it is akin to the Swiss CERN’ (Large Hadron Collider). When ideas or atoms or any ingredients are combined, something greater comes from it. Maybe the above is a bit sophomoric thinking and silly, but why not run with the truth?

I drove with a bit of madness from Geneva to Djerassi’s hotel near the Swiss Alps. The dead of winter is not for the feint of heart. Slipping along the ice and skimming along the snowy banks was crazy. But I was late, and I had a limited time to capture what I needed to get. I knew if I accelerated, I would get to my destination a bit sooner. “Vroom”.

My arrival was a bit anti-climatic. I knew Djerassi was quite wealthy from his discovery and other investments. I was ushered in to a small hotel room. Carl sat under a single police interrogation styled light. He studied his watch and said, “you are late”. So without much ado we danced. Sometimes, I felt like Tevye on the rooftops. Sometimes I feel like dancing the Capoeira.

It seemed that we immediately built a friendship. I was traveling for photography. He was traveling to liberate his identity. When I met Carl, I could hear him moan like Marlon Brando , “I coulda been a contender”. It was something that pervaded the Djerassi’s session. He wore his burden on his forehead. He shoulda won the NOBEL! Carl was a fabulous session.

#CarlDjerassi #contaceptive #ThePill #Scientist

Somehow any conversation weighed down by the Nobel issue was eclipsed by something more euphoric. In a way he just wanted to engage in my life as I wished to do with him. The genius told me he had fifteen minutes when I arrived. But two hours later we agreed to say goodbye.

Many people have felt comfortable commissioning me because I don’t gossip. It is the acknowledged law of the land that you don’t reveal the intimate conversations.

Carl did share many stories about people we had in common. His tone was pure admiration.

It was the dark of night when I got back into my car. I realized that I had met Marlon Brandos “contender” from “On the Waterfront”. But more importantly, I met a great intellectual icon in the company of the Swiss Alps. I raced along the dangers of winter’s darkness back to my Geneva comforts. Is there a better way to reflect upon photography’s pleasures?

#Rosecenterforearthandspace #americanmuseumofnaturalhistory #neildeGrasse #polshek #ToddSchliemann #architects

Architecture’s Wings

February 17, 2021

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).

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.

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

Hollywood Beckoned: Celluloid Reveals The Lives of Others

February 10, 2021

#RobertRichardson #OnceUponATimeinHollywood #KillBill #platoon

I remember my college film class, sitting alone in darkness, critiquing dozens of movies with my light stylus pen.

I remember sitting in darkness for seventy-two hours straight watching a celebration of fifty years of Academy Award winners for Best Picture.

I remember sitting in a dark theater watching twenty-four hours of classic animated shorts.

I remember a thousand films and hundreds of movie theaters where I sat alone in the front row with my boxes of Chocolate Malted Milk Balls.

I don’t feel alone when I commune with the film gods who have given me a voice and shared a vision. I was happy.

Movies have always helped me to see the light, when I was alone. Movies became a feast of visual friends that spoke to me in a new and private language. I have utilized that intimate language into a companionship with all of my camera apparatus.

I have become like a gyroscope spinning atop cresting mid-ocean waves rhythmically tracking the lives of others across continents with my camera. It often seems like cinematic euphoria.

During my portrait years I had photographed hundreds of the collective Hollywood/Los Angeles cultural cognoscenti. My cars and motorcycles carried me from Malibu to Pasadena and surprising stops in between. Every sojourn through the hundreds of cities my camera has seen offered me the opportunity to see more than was intended. I felt like Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne taking their weekend Los Angeles discovery drives.

#BillyWilder #SABRINA #Witnessfortheproscecution #Thesevenyearitch

One of my great mornings that turned into an afternoon delight was spent with the brilliant movie director Billy Wilder. We spent our session never once speaking about his movies. He shared stories about art collecting passions. He shared stories about introducing the likes of Kirk Douglas and more to the art of collecting.

After a few hours into the afternoon we shared a beer and a few sandwiches. We stood in front of a collection of Giacometti, Kirchner, Picasso and more. I felt I was part of a travel adventure into the art collecting world equivalent of Tolkien’s Hobbit. His intimate narratives were about worlds that are long gone. His compelling stories left me breathless and passionate for more stories, more art.

My Eyes On Fire: I Met Hollywood Gentle Magicians

The Hollywood experience that set me afire was a call from a Los Angeles magazine. They asked me if I could/would photograph five contemporary cinematographers; Robby Müller, Robert Richardson, Frederick Elmes, Barry Sonnenfeld and Jan Kiesser.

#FrederickElmes #BLUEVELVET #ICESTORM #Riversedge

I never speak for my subjects; for me the challenging experiences were life changing. It is difficult to just be yourself when you are trying to impress the film makers who would collectively influence thirty-years and more of movie making. These are cinematographers who have worked with/for Wim Wenders, Tarantino, Ang Lee, David Lynch, Coen Brothers, Oliver Stone, Scorsese and many more.

This was a dream assignment. They were visual geniuses. I was a rookie against Michael Jordan. It was as if I sat across from the chess Grand Master Garry Kasparov, (which I have done) overmatched.

For four days I danced around them with my cameras. It was a class in technique. They saw my moves coming at them. They sensed my lighting. They knew what my lenses would expose. I fought to surprise them. I challenged everything I knew to find an opening, to make a difference. I felt I needed to impress them. I never felt I accomplished my goal. But.

#BarrySonnenfeld #BloodSimple #MillersCrossing

I listened foremost. I knew they wanted me to succeed. Surprisingly each film man had advice. They had stories about successful failures, and magical surprises in their own work. Sometimes it felt like their mental telepathy was quietly whispering a plan. I listened. Filmdom’s camera men were intentionally or not enlightening my vision. All I had to do was make an interesting photo. Ha!

The epiphany that spoke to me years later, was that I had a great masters class into the art of seeing. Embrace it.

A magical sparkling of stardust was shared by better Merlins than I will ever be.

THE BRITISH INVASION: NEW YORK CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS UNDER SIEGE

January 25, 2021

The life that I chose is to photograph a world that is not mine. And to learn of lives not mine.

1984: MY FINAL BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS

Brian Urquhart : former Under-Secretary-General to the United Nations 1984

British “Body Snatchers” had swallowed up the overlords of New York Culture: The concert halls, the museums, auction houses, Intellectual magazines and rogue magazines were seemingly all led by Brits. It was a bit suspicious. Alone, I embarked on a journey to investigate the institutional elite.

I was a cultural and intellectual neophyte. It never occurred to me that an education and intellectual awakening was about to occur. The Royal Realm was ripe for investigation. Mission Impossibles’ Bruce Geller so presciently suggested, that if I chose the mission, intrigue awaited. Numerous portraits later, I was rewarded with a mosaic of cultural enrichment.

I have lived inside a child’s mind for a lifetime. I have learned to swear like a cantankerous old man. I have learned to dance like Baryshnikov. I have felt the power to stand up to fifty foot waves and to wander alone in the darkness of remote jungles. I tell myself many things. Though, I tell myself a single truth: Prepare to meet life’s challenges naked and on fire. The battles of the heart live in my every waking moment. The life that I chose is to photograph a world that is not mine. And to learn of lives not mine.

My list of portrait sessions had been chosen by a consortium of New York cognoscenti. My first stop was Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Brian Urquhart. I planned to meet him at his United Nations office. Today I can say the old saying applies, “If I knew then what I know now...”.

What an intriguing life this “Le Carre” personality would mean to me today. Espionage, torture and diplomacy were words attributed to Mi-5 and Mi-6 James Bond types. Certainly nobody says, “Bond,James Bond”. But I would have loved to have heard, “Urquhart, Brian Urquhart”.

He led me on a personal tour of the United Nations. I was quickly reminded of my sixth grade civics class. I realized I should have listened more and not have flirted with so many girls in my classroom. Brian Urquhart was gracious beyond his duty. I was a privileged soul that day. Later he invited me for cocktails at his home.

We met the next evening and had more than a few generous pours of scotch in stemless sterling silver goblets (oh, the significant things we remember). We chatted for hours about life in his diplomatic world and shared a few stories about people we knew in common. Mostly my ears were delightfully burning while being enraptured in his living plight and flight across continents. It was a wonder to me that someone as poised and engaging had spent a life in conflict and more, (as he asked to me)“another scotch?”. He was too alive, too fabulous too richly entertaining. I left that evening with eyes at half mast, and my youth full of tomorrows anticipation.

When it comes to women, I have always been like a 12 year old boy gazing at stars in the universe. I had spoken to Kathleen Tynan on the telephone. I had not ever seen her. I knew just a bit about her. Everyone said, “you have to photograph

Kathleen”. And then her apartment door opened.

I was equally 12 and 100 with infantile disability. I couldn’t talk. It was a presence that I had not yet experienced. I had met many fascinating people, maybe hundreds. It wasn’t poise alone. It was that I knew Kathleen had thousands of conversational intellectual intercourse with a multitude of people from all over our planet, and I had not. She stood in the doorway, and her eyes said “now what do you have to say for yourself”.

We surprisingly spent a couple of hours talking about anything and everything. I seemed to be having a private conversation with myself about her presence. I was in a cloud. Weeks later I brought over the images from our shoot. She greeted me in a glittery sequin dress that the 60’s “Go-Go Dancers” would have worn. Her dress was too short to talk about.

We sat on the sofa looking at my portfolio. I was beyond nervous. Her children arrived. Time for me to go. We never spoke again. But I have always wondered what Kenneth Tynan(famed London Journalist/critic and Kathleen Tynan (famed journalist/novelist)and the Tynan children’s lives were about. It was not of my world. Kathleen was the one to photograph. In those days she was the fascinating talented “Body Snatcher” I was looking for.

Many classical music pieces make me feel like I am floating in the middle of an ocean listening to the waves clap chords down to the “Challenger Deep” and inversely swash atop any shoreline in the world. The music is always about ivory keys, and zen searching strings. Musical notes/chords have always enabled my dreams to dance in alternate universes. One day when I asked YoYo Ma to explain the magic. He said, “you just need to listen”. My naïveté always gets the better of me.

I believe that Mickey Mouse is the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. I often dream in Fantasia’s colors. So when I arrived for my session with famed conductor Sir Jeffrey Tate at his home, I was sure his costume would be a swirl of exotic colors and his walls would be awash in saturated surrealism. Fortunately he was a prince in black cashmere.

My stories unexplainably always involve cocktails. Jeffrey suggested a glass of wine. I made myself comfortable on the living room sofa and prepared my lights and cameras while Tate’s fingers teasingly floated over the piano keys with a Mozart piece.

He moved about the apartment chatting with me as if we had been friends forever.

If he hadn’t winced for a second I would not have noticed his spinal curvature. His eyes quickly caught mine. He didn’t mind sharing and explaining. He just asked that I don’t make it part of the photograph.

The afternoon was almost too polite for me. He shared some stories about some coming of age conducting experiences. Stories about his mentor Georg Solti. I think he realized I was a bit culturally lost. But with a handshake and a bow, he told me he was leaving tickets for me to see his performance at the Metropolitan Opera House that evening. He suggested we should meet up afterwards. He would be delighted to introduce me to people I should want to know.

I remember how I felt crisscrossing New York City in those days. It was like playing checkers with people’s lives substituting for the Reds and the Blacks on the board.

My Black and White photographs turned out to be an anomaly in my career. To this day, I have no memory of why I chose the film. Just maybe I was reaching back to my appreciation for photography’s great history. An homage that visually was a “Remembrance of things Past”. British influencers stole my heart in 1984 with kind hearts and a wealth of living histories.

A Million Haitian Flamboyants

January 07, 2021

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.

The Brawling Brutalist With A Heart

December 18, 2020

Pritzker Prize Recipient Paulo Mendes da Rocha

São Paulo Subway station: Patriarch Plaza

When I was 7 years old I spent a summer at a day camp for boy’s. Among other things, I learned to Box.

When I was 9 years old my parents sent me to a summer camp in Canada. I learned to kiss my first girlfriend. I learned to sail and canoe across lakes. But I remember that I learned again to Box.

Boxing had a special allure for me. Maybe because I grew up watching “Ali”. The magic and inspiration that he brought to a child’s imagination was life expanding. Until he lost in a “fixed” fight to Leon Spinks. After that I moved on to the ferocity of Mike Tyson. But I really didn’t have the stomach for digesting my opponents ears.

I remember the famous casting director Marion Dougherty suggesting that I look her up in Hollywood. I asked her what I would do. She said that she would take care of that. “I like the way you are, not a blemish”. The Director George Roy Hill nodded.

I was waiting tables at the time. All of my fellow waiters were aspiring actors. They thought I was nuts not to take up her offer. Can you imagine that If I was truly handsome, I would have been a movie star. Maybe I could have played a boxer in a film. A childhood fixation coming to life on the silver screen?

My only dream was to become a photographer.

I suddenly heard a bang. I realized I was strolling through wild São Paulo alone. My mind was adrift in a fog of fantasy and memory. The rains and the clouds screamed for me to find shelter. I awakened to the consuming pollution and the city’s grimy immersing poverty. The stormy weather quickly vanished. I was alone in silence.

I found myself standing in front of a subway station designed by Paulo Mendes da Rocha. It was like something out of a movie. I saw these explosive lights racing up to the clouds. I drew my flash gun, attached it to my camera....and “POP”. One frame, one fraction of a second recorded the type of photograph I dream about everyday on the streets of any city, any place in the world. Too old for pirouettes, I danced on my tiptoes. This was São Paulo, anything can happen here.

I was here to shoot the portrait of Paulo Mendes. He was a recent recipient of the Pritzker Prize. My images would find there way into my book “Portraits of the New Architecture 2”. More importantly, unbeknownst to me the next two days would be another affirmation as to why I am a photographer every waking moment.

My assistant and I arrived the next morning promptly as promised at the architects’ studio. It was the start of something precious.

Paulo greeted me with a “bob and weave”. “Your so tall”.

For the next couple of hours he would talk about his work and continue to look me up and down like you might a Sequoia. It was very entertaining.

His studio reminded me more a high school mathematic or science lab. It was tiny with chalkboards and sketches. It seemed to hold the scribbling of a madman or maybe an Einstein. I chased him around like Frazier chased Ali around the ring. The angle was close. I think we were both exhausted. I know my assistant Koji was. He towed some lights around that I never used.

Paulo invited us to his apartment to meet his wife and a bite of lunch. This was a great beginning. His prototype “Paulistano Armchair” winked at us like the ‘49er Gold Miner who had found his first nugget of the Gold Rush and a giant bear stood across the banks of the river. There is always a bigger question.

Paulo’s wife Helene called for lunch. The four of us chatted about everything and nothing. Paulo became anxious like a formidable middleweight stirring to get back in the ring. I sat in the chair with a cup of coffee following lunch. This was history for me. My agenda as a photographer has been to touch history. It was time to get a move on.

We set out for a tour of São Paulo. I reminded myself of the Brancusi myth. He marched from Romania to France to discover his purpose an an artist. I remembered the Tadao Ando myth. He marched across Europe to engage and discover the greatness of architecture. In real time I saw Paulo Mendes lead his devoted followers across his Brazilian São Paulo. His real life experiences mattered.

A Mysterious image inside the Sculpture Museum

We saw “Niemeyer’s, Lina Bo Bardi’s and more. But most importantly we saw Mendes share the streets of São Paulo like an anthropologist might share the findings of the French Chauvet Caves. Brazilian preservation and everything prehistoric mattered to this fighter. We were immersed in the finer points of everything Paulo Mendes. A dreamy education that was just beginning.

The afternoon ended. We made our way to a local restaurant for dinner. After, he insisted on walking us to our hotel. The night fell and wild São Paulo descended. Hundreds from the squalor of backstreets approached. Mendes motioned to us. We were to follow his bob and weave through the open plaza. His boxer stood front and center. If I was to name the moment, it would be the Paulistano Dance. We arrived at our hotel. Paulo reminded us to meet him at the appointed hour tomorrow. “Stay safe”.

That night I received a phone call from the Mexican architect Ricardo Legorretta.

We were trying to negotiate a commission outside of the city. A house he designed for unique clients. It never worked out. He asked me how I was enjoying São Paulo. I spoke about Paulo Mendes, and my fantastic moment in Brazil. I mentioned the city was like a Brazilian Los Angeles. It has much to offer. I try to grasp what I can in life’s minutiae.

The next day we met at the home that Paulo Mendes da Rocha built for his family. The rest of the day as we toured his designs we considered what his vision might mean to the greater São Paulo and a greater Brazil. We had a master class in architecture in a few hours. Our heads were spinning with visual purpose.

The morning departure: My assistant Koji was to take off for Tokyo, and I was to return to New York. Before we left behind some of the São Paulo mysteries and more, we looked at each other with that expression that could only be read as; “what just happened”.

It is rare when people share what they can share. But when they do, life as it is supposed to be whispers into your heart for a lifetime.

Balthus: I CHASED THE ARTIST INTO THE NIGHT

December 03, 2020

I stood by my car door. I made a sinuous pirouette. For a great moment I felt like the great George Orwell. I was about to hit the “road” to and pay “homage” to. Sometimes I think my sole purpose as a photographer is akin to a surfer stepping into liquid: To define the heart of engagement. I was about to embrace it all.

I arrived in Geneva from Paris. Vanity Fair Magazine had arranged a photo session with one of the 20th Centuries most intriguing artists. Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, commonly known as Balthus. He had nibbled at my visual aesthetics for quite sometime.

God’s canvas was the universe as some say. But Balthus’s was a few square feet. Imagination is a gift from the universe, but a canvas is a gift to a handful from each generation.

Balthus lured you into the canvas as Peter Greenaway lured you into the final meal from “The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & Her Lover”. You inadvertently saw what Balthus saw, you inadvertently tasted Greenaways’ finale. Human nature lives luridly in the Balthus oeuvre.

Alexander Liberman: The Quintessential Creative Director for Condé Nast and the second half of the 20th century

Pierre Matisse: The pre-eminent art dealer of the second half of the 20th century

Before I shifted into gear I took a second to remind myself that two of America’s cultural elites arranged this moment. ALEXANDER LIBERMAN, the creative editor of Condé Nast long before Anna Wintour. And one of the worlds pre-eminent art dealers PIERRE MATISSE (Henri Matisse’s son). I was locked and loaded with a cultural army to protect my interests.

I took off in the Swiss January snow. Geneva to Rossiniere is a cultural shift likened to tectonic plated shifting. It is almost like traveling through the melting pot of middle earth. So much is the same but so much feels like an abyss apart.

For one cultural second I was stepping into Jack Kerouac’s rant. His “Satori in Paris” had been a huge influence on me. He searched for his family identity. I was questing for accomplishment. His flask of Remy Martin by his side was now mine. I drove fast toward my engagement. The snowy ride spit up visions of the “White Walkers” (from the Game of Thrones). Fear and anticipation vibrated throughout. The nip of Remy served me well. I became a bit dreamy but a bit more excited.

I used to use the word Vroom to jumpstart almost all of my photography engagements. A bit of mental acceleration with of course some “Remy”. I raced through this road trip. I have traveled Switzerland from west to east, north to south. The mountains the valleys the rivers and so much more have been stamped on my brain. It has been an amazing visual history that will find a home in my obit one day.

I arrived in Rossiniere. I was to meet my dream ghost, Balthus. People who knew Balthus, knew Balthus. I did not. My brain spun wildly in my rental car. How was I supposed to be? I had photographed hundreds of portraits by that time. Yet this was my ghost. I needed to find Balthus. I needed to capture history like no other. My visual mission was to connect our cultural history from my life and lives before and lives to follow. I was mapping the topography of the twentieth century. I was passionately looking for me in this moment. I desperately needed to succeed.

Balthus’s wife Setsuko greeted me at the front door. I gingerly entered the “Grand Chalet”. I knew this was a magical moment, but not until much later did I realize the significance.

I met the master. The three of us went into the living room for some tea, I had promised that I would show a small portfolio( Dekooning, Noguchi, Nevelson, Jasper Johns, Miro and more). He apparently was expecting Picasso, Henry Matisse and more. I am sure he knew that they died before I was born?

We had a delightful exchange. Then into the dining room where I sat next to their 8-10 year old daughter. The four of us enjoyed a terrific 3 course meal. We easily chatted for a couple of hours. Balthus looked over at me and excused himself.

Quite a bit of time passed. Out of the blue Setsuko explained that Balthus has decided not to pose for the portrait. Maybe if I were to return in a week or so.

I suddenly morphed into the roster of Marvel Comic characters. More specifically the Hulk. My celebratory moment diffused in a few words. I raged internally. This had never happened to me. I was obviously ill prepared. I stalked, I ranted. The cage door had opened and my capture from Safari had escaped. The cat had disappeared into the darkness.

Suddenly as if a cool wind from the north captured my racing heart. “Setsuko, will you allow me to shoot your portrait?” I put up a good front. I produced something I was pleased with. The trailers in my eyes kept flickering as if it was Balthus teasing my camera. I prayed for him to appear. He never did.

I left for my car. He had to be somewhere. But he wasn’t.

I shifted gears past the “White Walkers” and other dreamscapes on my return to Geneva.

The next morning I found road rage as a momentary release. I set my mind on new conquests. I placed the throttle on vroom to the South of France (St Paul de Vence, which is an animated story for another time) and focused on Chagall and the unique southern retreat of many. I raced back north to Paris for Dubuffet and Paris.

I ran from one portrait to another with a smile from ear to ear. I realized that I was a wild bird without a guidance system. I had not a mentor. Advice from just about anyone would have soothed my surging angst. But nothing.

I refreshingly realized I had an open canvas to run in every direction. I ran through every nook and cranny that Paris had to offer. I was on fire. If I had died that month in 1984 It would have been the most satisfying death. I had set my goal to become a photographer. I was shooting who and what I wanted. I was shooting the way i wanted to make photographs. It was everything I had dreamed it to be.I stood alone on a corner in Paris.

I stood alone in the world of photography.

I missed the “ghost”. I headed into my favorite cafe for an omelette and frites. A nip of...

I was divinely alive.

Breathless: I Was a Prenatal Jazz Baby

November 12, 2020

Jazz was whispered loudly into my heart from the beginning of my time.

Gun shots rang near by. The police swarmed. We scattered. Count Basie and Joe Williams passionately performed for peace. The 1960’s Watts Concert continued.

I received neuronal signals. Just maybe, even before I knew what it meant, the beginning arrived. I was making history that I was meant to make.

When I was very young I remember passing by the homes of jazz phenoms Ella Fitzgerald and Errol Garner. I always imagined that I could magically hear their notes of music emanating from their yards. Today I realize that my camera has remembered what I thought and what I saw. I have remembered everything I have ever seen.

My formative years had many twists and turns. Music in my life changed many perceptions. My mind was constantly altered by new perceptions from the world I faced. Music defined how my hazel eyes absorbed the world.

I remember sitting with Santana’s “Abraxas” bouncing off my walls one early evening. My father came in. I was sure he was going to tell me to turn the sound down. Instead he sat down with me. He said that he could hear the connection to Jazz. A few minutes later Led Zeppelin united us with“Stairway to Heaven”. A few minutes later we were trading sounds. Many years later my dad called me and I heard my “Abraxas” on his stereo.

Music has had a history in my visual evolution. When I moved to New York, I needed a reason to be. I thought I was alone. My camera was my companion my introduction to the unknown. I had a camera, people wanted to know what it was for me. It was a tool that would not allow me to be alone nor lonely. I hit the streets. My camera was my diviner. My camera navigated how I saw the streets of my life.

My early New York days were embracingly alone on the streets from Harlem to the Village. The days reminded me of Ella and Errol. I heard music. My camera lead me to those sounds. I stepped into every club venue in Manhattan. I crisscrossed the avenues from Lenox and above to the east and west rivers and down to the seaport. I was Peter Sellers in “Being There”tending to his garden. But my mind was a swoosh in a Hyperloop. Nobody spoke to me. But I was alive with exchanges within.

Photography has a funny soul. I never knew what I was doing. I was a bit of a butterfly to light...the light told me how and where to focus. I focused on Dizzy, Miles, Phineas and more. There was not a club door I didn’t know. I didn’t know what it meant to have entre to the city. My camera inexplicably was my access.

Sometimes when I look back, I remember shooting in a venue with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards watching me photograph Big Joe Turner at Tramps. Sometimes I remember Lou Reed watching me photograph Junior Wells at the Mudd Club...or maybe Warren Beatty watching me shoot the Clash at Webster Hall.

I think maybe more uniquely, I remember walking home at 3:am to 5:am along Park Ave. South. A wall of prostitutes dressed in naked outfits telling me how handsome I was. My mind was most times mercifully diverted from their protestations by the revelry in my mind of a night lived. The predawn hours delivered me to Ali’s. Ali was one of Muhammad Ali’s sparring partners. He made sure that Gina, his pizza gal made sure I was handed the best of best pizza slices.

I took 2-3 slices to bed on most nights. I pressed the cheese against my lips feeling the fever from the evenings’ music. I was to be born again with energy for the next night.

I read “The Queen’s Gambit” in 1983. I realized a kinship between me and Tevis’ Beth Harmon. She was me. I was not alone in my thoughts. I too previsualized all my shots/ moves. I had constructed hundreds of images even before I moved the shutter. Ten million of history’s photographs whispered points to consider. I used all of them to save me and send me forward. I was never lost. Alone maybe like “The Man Who Fell to Earth”. Miraculously I began to make images that mattered to me. Thank you Walter Tevis.

The Art of War: A Sun Tzu Dream

October 30, 2020

I have not witnessed war firsthand. But I have walked in the footsteps of giants who have met the fright and friction of war. Those who have witnessed wars’ horrors and have firsthand seen the devils’ imps dancing naked around the maypole drowning our souls.

Calvin Tomkins the preeminent American art critic once wrote, “Calvin Tomkins - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org › wiki › Calvin_Tomkins “Richard, you have photographed almost everyone I have met...”.

Calvin’s note to me means a lot because I always wanted to be where I would discover inspiration. Photographing Calvin in 1988 was a dream.

It is impossible to list all of the amazing artists who have shrilled in askance, why are we at war. Paintings, etchings and more have stood the test of time from Goya to Haring. Artists have set afire alarms in galleries and museums across the globe. Their art breathes with facts and fictions. We witness the artists heroes and demons whilst we wade in political rhetoric and promises.

Mingling with art is like going to church. Great art touches our souls in unexpected ways. When the moments happen, I invoke ungodly incantations. Dancing atop an infernal landscape can shake anyone out of slumbers. The rarity of those moments still surprises me.

I would have loved to have sat alongside Italo Calvino as he weaved together his fact filled fictional Marco Polo recollecting his travels to the Kublai Khan in “Invisible Cities”. A great story I wish to have told. I have other stories to tell. Art will often reveal stories that matter.

The 60s thru the 80s were an influential period in American art. Most New York artists worked and lived in a densely populated area of less than 2 square miles...Soho, West Village, East Village and Tribeca. I stood one day and many days in this epicenter.

The afternoon I entered the LaGuardia Place studio of the artists Leon Golub and Nancy Spero I realized that my maundering about the lack of relevance in the art world had come to an end. Church was in session.

In a lifetime of stories that I share about my communing with cultural icons, I realize how few times the moments are life changing. Spero and Golub’s commitment to art, the artist struggle, their personal struggles can only be met with devout admiration. They saw and engaged the apocalyptic effects of war on our society and in our minds. They trusted that change could be had with the visual arts They were believers in their beliefs.

They took my hands as if on a stroll through the park. They shared their two worlds of intertwined agendas paired together like birds feathers. I didn’t understand their passion, I inhaled it in every moment. We three seemed to dance as they shared their paintings, drawings and so much more. I felt as if a world of art history’s conflict with war was a touchstone to this moment. I felt I was being tested for passage into their inner sanctum. Their artistic war vibrated with every image. I was alive in their fight. So many artists were protective of their works and minds. Leon and Nancy opened a floodgate of personal agendas.

When I left to the village streets to remember my afternoon, I thought about a thousand other artists I had photographed: Louise Nevelson, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein and many more who were so committed to their sanctums privacy, that to be given the key to enter was a gift.

I endlessly rhapsodize about my photography travels and experiences because I realize I have been given a gift. It has only taken me a lifetime to understand how the visual feasts have enhanced my every waking moment.

Chasing Joseph Stalin: The Opera

October 14, 2020

“I never cared where

But to

Be there”

Over a seven year period I made a number of trips to the former Soviet Union. My travels were always predicated on the portraits I was to make. I was in my comfort zone outside of my element. It was a great time the happiest of times. I would dance with my camera, and cast a spell on my unsuspecting subjects. I was Fantasia’s “Sorcerers’ Apprentice”. Soviet cultural elite would host my magic in their homes and studios.

Every afternoon or early evening after I had completed my portrait schedule I stepped onto the Soviet streets. Something always struck me from the dark abyss. Something had vanished. Russia. A particular Russian past was whitewashed from existence. Memories were interrupted. The ghosts of the fallen past had been eviscerated. Still the nightmares lingered. Lenin and Stalin patrolled the citizens minds. Demons lived.

For years I would ask Soviet’s whatever happened to the Revolution’s monumental statues and paintings. Fear and laughter filled the rooms. The eyes and ears of the KGB were everywhere.

I decided I would look for Stalin’s ghost in Georgia. He was the most feared and autocratic Soviet.

My flight from Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) on Aeroflot was a study in fear of flying. I sat in a machine that could fly. It had wings and pilots and a stewardess or two. But the rest would have been an Orwellian “Animal Farm”. The plane was full. My recollection was that there were some 20 passengers including about 5 generals, 3 pigs, 2 goats and about 10 chickens. The runner between aisles was crinkled up to the point the stewardess had to lift the refreshment cart from aisle to aisle.

We made five unscheduled landings in the three and half hour flight. It was either a general or domestic livestock stepping off to deserted landing strips with only mountains on each side. One by one the animals looked over at me and said; “I am dinner tonite please save me”.

Landing in Tbilisi was a starlit moment. An ancient city and a beckoning oasis greeted me. Adventures and misadventures awaited. My translator introduced me to Georgian culture. Tbilisi was a treasure trove of visual delights for my camera. A bountiful of food welcomed me everywhere I went. The city’s cuisine was a savory gift. I remember my eyes capturing persimmons that looked like a panther’s jeweled eyes. Maybe it was a sign that Stalin was near by. I could feel him.

I tried for many days to share my desires and stir some interest in finding Stalin. One of the artist’s I photographed heard my bleat. He offered to show me something special. He would drive me to Stalin’s birth town Gori.

That day was certainly among the most spiritual of my life. He picked me up with my translator in his 1930’s Gestapo styled red Mercedes. We made the hour and half drive with my eyes mingling with ordinary landscape. I did feel like my mind was mirroring Orwells’ Coming Up For Air”. Different agendas different times, but something new was at the end of the road.

Once in Gori we visited a family lost in an alternative history. It was as if Stalin’s ghost greeted me. The only time in my life that I actualized “Alice going down the rabbit hole”.

A world retreated from a Time-Machine that broke down in the 1950s. Maybe this was to be a “Collyer brothers” story. But for me this is why to this day my eyes dream“ I never cared where, but to be there”.

Like most substantive Soviet affairs, the morning started off with shots of moonshine potato vodka. We sat in the kitchen playing ping pong with various translations about Stalin. I stared across the room at two life size “Joe”portraits. The conversation became loudly animated. I excused myself to visit their garden. My eyes were in sensory overload trying to absorb a lifetime of Stalin framed newspaper clippings adorning the garden walls. Maybe the jewel of this paleontologist like discovery was the porcelain fountain statue of Stalin peeing in the pool of water.

I was young I was stunned I was in heaven. I made my way back to the kitchen. It was time to leave. The four Soviets turned towards the life size paintings and gave a “zieg heil” salute to their sovereign. My feet were in exit mode.

My mind was under siege on the drive back. My vodka tears were streaming down my cheeks. I had imagined something more rewarding from my efforts to find the Soviet past. I had imagined something more empowering. Instead my youthful disillusionment remembered another defeating moment. I was inescapably holding the hand of the famed Soviet soprano Galina Vishnevskaya.

We stood together in front of “Joe” and the Kremlin Politburo. One evening she had concluded an exhaustive performance of Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”. She was mentally and physically exhausted. She was thrilled that her leader had invited her to the prestigious dinner.

“Joe”motioned her to perform for his guests. She had believed she was an invited guest. She realized she was a mere servant. She performed for her life for her future. Tears poured down her cheeks. Stalin’s alligator eyes smiled. He enjoyed the fear that held the room and Galina prisoner.

My guide returned me to my hotel room. The vodka whispered for me to sleep. I no longer needed to find Stalin. The intoxicating experience would lift me up for tomorrow and everyday that followed.

For the Love of Women

October 01, 2020

The train has always been a place to allow my mind to blend into the rhythms of the clouds. I imagined the sensory deprivation tanks à la the film Altered States.

I eagerly floated my mind between happiness and madness.

It is mostly a great prelude to what I might discover upon meeting my subjects. The pre-visualization is like pre-op before surgery... the mind goes, the body goes.

One afternoon I tested my relaxed discipline on a train to see Eva Zeisel. The ceramic designer was a prized moment for me.

There was a time when just about everyday was a day to make a portrait. I have not decided if those days were made for me to collect memories or make memories. I gladly stepped across the streets of Manhattan. I crisscrossed the globe. I weaved through and around the lives of cultural icons who impacted our lives, my life.

Eva was ninety something, I was forty something. When I arrived at her home/studio, It was if I was a soldier returning from war. Her eyes greeted me as if I was there to rescue her from self-imposed exile. Her aged frame lit up an entire universe. I was aglow. We quickly became acquainted like two lost old souls needing what the other had to share. I knew she would open her past life for me. I knew her story would become our story.

I merely had a camera, Eva had these beautiful ceramic works that looked like dancing heirloom egg shells whispering dreams in the wind. There was grace and beauty that my privileged life has not forsaken. I touched her fragile pieces to try and understand the fragility of her time spent in Russian concentration camps and the passionate urgency of a woman as she stepped towards independence. I would never know the extent of Eva’s nightmares. Her sufferings and eventual freedom became essential to Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. Eva and Arthur were romantic partners...Oh to be a fly on the wall.

Her passionate life, and ghostly sufferings raced my heart. Her ceramics were a window into her past and a mirror into my present. I have always wrapped my mind around these unanticipated pleasures my memories held.

At days end I found the return ticket to my city. I knew I would never contribute to the world as Eva did. The nearly two hour ride home allowed me to decompress. With a nip from my flask I embraced the words and passions that this gentle jewel shared.

#LouiseNevelson #sculptor #artist #YO_YOMA #GABRIELSOBOE #ENNIOMORRICONE

Louise Nevelson in pictures looked like she was spreading havoc around small villages. She was part fanatic preacher in “Night of the Hunter” and part everything “Patricia Highsmith”. She was the darkness that reigned over children’s nightmares. I imagined her studio to be like a clutch of witches’ cauldrons sending billowing potions into the unknown.

Nevelson had been photographed by all of the great photographers. What was I to make of her madness. I was afraid. And then... I stepped into her Soho, New York studio. An assistant helped me with my bags. I waited in the corner of her studio. Her massive gentle sculptures stared down at me. I waited.

I heard her voice come through the alcoves. Her powers were present. I knew I had heard a similar sound somewhere before. Yes! I exclaimed. Yo-Yo Ma.(Yo-Yo who I photographed not too long ago, had performed Ennio Morricone’s Gabriel’s Oboe) Nevelson’s purr and Yo-Yo’s cello cosmically seemed to collide into one seductive enchantment.

I think Louise saw me as someone to take care of. Her intimidating warmth shattered my impressions. She coddled me. With her powerful embrace, she sat me down. She placed her black cashmere cloak around her shoulders and demanded to hear anything and everything about the artist portraits I had made to date.

I had made hundreds of portraits by this time. I certainly mingled among all styles, all factions of contemporary art history.

Her Yo-Yo Ma reached out and spoke to me. “Richard my dear, you are going about this the wrong way. You are making beautiful pictures, but of who?” Artists I said.

She said, but what is the connection. I said I am making pictures of artists from all different styles and periods. She said you need to become more intimate with your subjects. She looked at my face and said, not to worry you are not my type and even for me too young.

She asked if I play poker. I said no. She said, ok this is what you need to do.

I am going to introduce you to some fellow poker players. If you want to know me you need to know my world.

#louiseNevelson #PatriciaHighsmith #Nightofthehunter #jasperjohns #Mercecunningham #johnCage #RobertRauschenberg #poker ART

I sat by her side drinking a beer. She dialed Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage/Merce Cunningham and maybe five more. She looked at me when she got off the phone. She said, you know what I am trying to tell you? I said, I think so. She said, well get on home and send me some pictures from your sessions.

I said, but what about us. She said, I don’t have anymore time. She looked at my eyes and whispered, make it quick and make it good.

It was the only time that I felt I was out of my element. When I was finished she gave me her hand and said thank you. I said for what? She said for making a photograph that I know I will love.

Zaha Hadid Whispered

September 17, 2020

I sat one afternoon amidst a room of giants. I was not frightened. It was like something that Thomas De Quincey (Confessions of an English Opium Eater) would experience the morning after an “episode”. Dwarfed by unique personalities, I imagined I needed a machete to cut through the axons that ruled my impulses. Life sometimes seemed in flux, but I was in control.

The flock wondered why I was among them. It was an odd moment for me, perplexing for them. My stature in the community was nowhere near theirs. But there was a whisper on the wind that lured me to safety.

Yale University is/was a tremendous institution, at the apex of American education. I was an invited guest to sit in on a series of architecture graduate school reviews. My host/friend, Greg Lynn always thought that a visual perspective, a photographer’s perspective could warrant a valuable suggestion and advice to the built environment. It is a necessity to consider architecture not only for its design and practical applications, but how the world might see it as well. It is a way to communicate with the populace and the future/past. I could not disagree.

I made the journey to New Haven for about 6 years. I was always excited to greet faces from my past, and a creative core: Frank Gehry, Robert Stern, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Wolf Prix, Richard Meier, Greg Lynn, Charles Holland, an amazing gathering of fabulous minds.

The reviews allowed me to encounter the new age of architecture that the graduate students would present. There is something of a primitive fire that arrives under the ass that says, “get a move on little doggie, youth is marching your way.” I constantly felt that I needed to arm myself with the experiences from my past to share with the present future. It was a wonderful stimuli.

So there I sat among Pritzker Prize winners and exceptional architects from across the globe. I looked around at the seated gathering. One in particular who dueled with me from the past was the reigning queen of architecture, Zaha Hadid. Zaha was certainly one of the great creative architecture giants. In a way she was the 21st century’s Oscar Niemeyer.

Herbert Muschamp, former editor of the New York Times once claimed Zaha Hadid one of the best architects of the second half of the 20th century. Zaha was tougher than almost everyone on the playing field. She had all the weapons: Talent, style, vision and hutzpah.

Our earlier encounter was bloody. Every word was a match lit, a reason to spar. “En garde” seemed to precede every exchange. The new meeting at Yale presented a different and surprisingly tender hearted genius. I was caught off guard. She was brilliant. She measured my heart and shared her mind. I knew life seemed surreal from time to time, but this was a trip to the moon.

As we spent the afternoon critiquing the work of a new army of architects. I caught myself looking down at Zaha’s shoes. I remarked how amazing they were. Zaha wore these ultra chic shoes specially designed for her by a world famous house. She gave me a bit of history about the stylish footwear as we admired the students efforts.

Architects are sometimes measured by the shoes they wear. Shoes are oddly a status symbol. The realm of design inhabits many idiosyncrasies. I never asked anyone about this. But the feet had to wear not just Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Hermès, or? But absolutely unique to the fashion brand, unless one of the architects was tickling ninety and corrective shoes for seniors were more comfortable.

Simple elegance :: Cincinnati Contemporary Museum of Art

Zaha was a genius. This particular afternoon she seemed to want to treat my ear as a companion. She constantly leaned over and gestured to some student’s work, or conveyed something about one of her colleagues.

The review was coming to an end. Zaha leaned towards me and said I want to tell you something. But you must promise not to share this with anyone! She whispered into my ear! “Now promise, this is between us”.

All of the attendees got up to leave for the day. As Zaha got to the door, she looked back and mouthed, you promised! And then she was gone.

I never saw her again after that day. But the whisper emboldened me...