TEN MILLION INFLUENCES MESMERIZED MY EYES

February 24, 2022

The Pavillon de Flore and the Tuileries Gardens : Marie-Charles-Isidore Choiselat 1849

Often I stand amid the corridors of the infinite Manhattan sky scraping towers. When I realize the moment is now, it is as if all life on earth bends for your asking. I stand as if on a skiff becalmed and sense the windless seas recede before my eyes. My forefinger presses the shutter and a single reflex becomes a record of a privileged history that will be seen in history when I die. It is all I know.

Julius Shulman taught me where a photographer should stand in 1976. He set up his camera. He threw the focus cloth over my head and the 8x10 format camera. The moment became part template and spreadsheet for every image I have imagined. It also helped me navigate through a photography life. Julius was teaching me how to see. I could almost hear Sherlock Holmes whispering “It’s elementary…”

Looking at great photography is like reading the diary of a genius. There is a visual map that becomes the quintessential plans to what is gold vs pyrite.

I impossibly tried to stand hand in hand with with the French photographers Choiselat and Ratel. For decades I have tried to emulate in principle their photograph from 170 years ago, to no avail.

I dreamed of a road trip with Paul Strand. In my dreams we discovered the arch in Mexico together. He made magical narratives that circle my mind like fables written just for my eyes. His angle dangles alluring vistas into secrets not yet known. I stand where he stood knowing there is not a possible repeat. Yet I am so happy to know this image.

Albert Renger-Patzsch immortalized the photography of trees. Yet for my eyes his hundreds of photographs that leaned away from the wind into the mist of dawns and twilights stoked my photography passion. He dictated the way objects stood holding the light in play.

My breath halting in mid sentence I realize artistic genius of others allows me to spread my wings. I am compelled to explore ways to execute photography in ways I wasn’t aware. If I need to stop traffic, run across hindering terrains to make the better image, then I need to do it.

Sometimes while traveling to various continents or merely across city grids I become like a “Griot” for all the people who want to listen to stories about what the lens may see in worlds not there own, but maybe more importantly worlds right in front of their eyes that they may not see.

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Six Degrees of Everything from Mao Zedong to Saarinen Architecture’s Life Among the Living and the Dead

February 11, 2022

She said, “you should go to China if only to see Mao’s gold. When my husband traveled with Mao, he told me that he got to see where all of the gold was hidden”.
Lois Snow

My earliest photography dream was to trace the steps of Genghis Khan in China. It would have been a fabulous journey through a time machine of visual delights. I imagined the landscape to be both real and fantastically beyond any known realm.
Years later, 1987 to be specific, the Chinese government asked me if I would be interested in emulating my “Soviet” cultural portrait series in China. I was excited. Just maybe Genghis Khan was in my sites. The offer seemed to intellectually bind my mind to an imaginary game of “Go” with the Chinese. Too many moves for this novice. And then it got worse. In the end Heironymus Bosch’s “Hell”seemed like a quiet place. I lost the game. I still wonder where the gold was/is hidden.
Today, I imagine that I have morphed into a Jane Goodall like student of gorilla behavior and an Archaeologist: The above is the closest way I can describe how I approach the life photographing buildings, and understand what stands and what stood before. It is a fabulous place to be for a photographer. The camera dreams, I dream. With luck I execute an image that becomes something more than a still frame. A fabulous place to be.

What lies beneath:

Over forty years my archives suggests that at one time I needed to see people in all of their cultural ways. Today, my architectural photography compels me to imagine skeletons and fragments from a thousand millenniums underfoot. Everyday I inadvertently dance on their lives. Everyday I dance to the lives that lived before me. I engage the quietude and magnitude that architecture presents. I celebrate the deafening silence it entails. We cannot look at the built architecture and merely say there it is. Undoubtedly when we begin to appreciate what lies, what stands before our eyes, one must think of the past and future tense as a way of molding our appreciation for architecture’s history.
My privilege is to work taking pictures. My luxury is to travel for someone or entity because of what I will see, and the way I will see. So the jet takes me to ancient lands. I meet the people (Niemeyer, Gehry, Hadid ) who contribute to the world’s fascinating footprint and more. I marry decades of plausible physical scenarios to make a living composite from everything I have learned.
Many people have traveled to the various ends of the earth for work or pleasure. But few people have been to New Haven CT. with my friend Greg Lynn, and hear him say “aren’t you going to shoot the Saarinen. Few people have stood with Architect Kengo Kuma and hear him say, “you should shoot the National Stadium by Kenzō Tange before they tear it down”. Few have heard Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes suggest that I should not miss The Oscar Niemeyer in São Paulo.
Few people have had hundreds of architects fill their mind with an infinite amount of matter.
If I was not able to dream about Genghis Khan and the gold in China,
I might not have been able to imagine and consider where we have been and where we might go. I might not have been to places on the planet that have made my camera a recorder of our times.
Being able to make decades of photographs reminds me of the line from Aretha Franklin’s Angel:
“Keep lookin and just keep cookin”.

Italian Metaphor For...

January 27, 2022

My friend’s brother was a priest. The priest had a position in the Vatican.

The priest’s position at the Vatican was to curate concerts for the Pope and visiting dignitaries.

The music world was his toy store. He could just ring up and have an opera, or a symphony and more at the Vatican’s doorstep.

The priests’ other important responsibility was to raise funds for the Vaticans performances, and music library collections. This responsibility dictated that the priest would entertain wealthy aristocrats. Patrons with titles: Marchioness here a Contessa there or a Duchess would do.

When the appointed occasion arose, he revved his little red convertible Alfa Romeo.He would place his pedal to the metal, and speed out of the Vatican.With one of his patrons smiling wildly in the passenger seat, the two would race past all known sites which drew attention: Castel Sant’Angelo, Colosseum, Altar of the Fatherland and more. The priest’s little convertible always seemed to accelerate at the exact moment that dozens would bellow, “There goes the crazy priest and…”.

The priest had this buoyant hysterical cackle that seemed to wink at death in the skies. Only the priest was in on the humor. He did not have a drivers license, nor did he know how to drive. His red car became so popular that tourists would wait at appointed corners to point laughing fingers towards the runaway priest until one day…

His relationships with certain companionship was a bit lurid, even by Vatican standards.Nobody is sure if the priest’ transparent nature for embracing life’s gifts was a tease towards the unsuspecting onlookers. But some suspect something darker:his entreaties faced deaf ears. So like “ET” it was time to reckon with personal issues and head home.

A particular brilliant day was at hand. He and one of his companions made their way to the Amalfi Coast for a picnic of sorts. Still a brilliant day with a beautiful companion. The afternoon still ahead, The priest once again revved up his little engine and raced down the coast. He sped past cars, espied the landscape and so it is said sped a bit faster and over the cliffs.

There is a rumor that once the car took flight all of Rome observed a silent Benediction. One person near the accident suggested that he could hear Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” as the little red Alfa Romeo took off skyward before disappearing into the Tyrrhenian Sea.

I somehow felt oddly emboldened by this example of living. A bit ambiguous but striking.

I remember needing to race one day from Orvieto to Montalcino. I raced at top speeds. I passed many towns seemingly yelling, ”which way to Montalcino, I am late??”. The Italian air was aiding my Italian language skills. But to what point? I had a very limited time. I needed to make a fabulous portrait and return in time for dinner. I failed on both fronts.

There was this constant comic bubble filled with expletives as I drove between the two destinations. My mind was jammed and blurry. The Italian miles I logged were coming at me like a thousand symmetrical patterns. Each pattern part of an amazing mosaic like toast points with something jammy on the end.

I remember lakes: Como, Maggiore and more. I remember cemeteries above ground and those communing with the River Styx. I remembered Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in Italy. I remembered Lord Byron had set out to murder Percy Shelley in Italy. But mostly I remember the footprint of a nation and historical references to leaders like Caesar, Mussolini and more.

The many Italian places/faces my camera has seen are windows into more stories: Assisi, Rome, Florence, Milan, Bari, Bologna, Padua, La Spezia, Pisa, Sottsass, Piano, Fuksas, Soleri, Burri, Aulenti, Clemente, Cucci, Chia and…

When my car and camera arrived atSandro Chia’s villa. This hulking Alpine mountaineer in Ovids’ sandals greeted me. Our eyes spanned over the miles of Brunello di Montalcino. Chia proudly said. “This is all mine”. I knew it wasn’t true. The view reminded me of the first Apollo landing: Infinite space and dreams of infinity.

We had known each other for about fifteen years. Dinner at Mikio’s West Village Omen or Tribeca’s Odeon restaurants and a few nightclubs in between, our conversations always started with what the future might be.

Sandro’s backstory was a bit maddening, but his arrival into the art market as part of the three C’s (Chia, Clemente, Cucci) was like Caesar’s triumphant defeat of the Gauls. For a short time the Italians were the darlings of the art market. This newly mellowed prince on top of the Montalcino cliff was the artist I came to make new pictures of.

This was to be my third session with the man the artist. Nothing could be better than hearing “I am glad you are still making photographs”. I asked why, and he said, “because people need to see them. We sat with his wife and kids. We had a some soup, a bite of bread and cheese.

Finally we got around to our present lives as creatives. I have seen so many miles of this Italian world, and yet two hours and change of a couple of bulls looking at art indulging in some “snaps”kicking some dirt around, was dreamy.

{ James Joyce’s Ulysses had nearly 5000 corrections in Publisher Sylvia Beach’s early editions}

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BRASSAI'S CAT; PARIS 1983

January 13, 2022

Roland and Abram Topor :: Father and son 1983

If I could remember all of my dreams. My day in Paris with Jean Dubuffet, Roberto Matta, Pierre Restany and Roland/Abram Topor

Paris was a gift for me in the way a child remembers his first toy from under the Christmas tree. My eyes were aglow with happy tears. All gifts are mindfully temporary.

If I could have one day back and have five thousand more just like it…it would be a day

like so many days in Paris: I weaved together a life’s experience in twelve hours. The thrill to be alive.

I stepped across from my hotel to the cafe/charcuterie/fromagerie for a baguette swept with butter, layered with jambon and fromage. I placed it inside my levi/denim jacket pocket so I could pry a thumb length bite apart for hourly sustenance.

I am way too big to be considered elfin. But when an army of winged angels swept my spirits from the 6th arrondissement to the 18th I saw Paris the way my dreams then and now breathe life into my eyes. I was gifted a bit of verve. My camera responded.

My first appointment was to photograph a young Texan model in training at Paris’ famed necropolis; Cimetière de Montmartre. Later that morning I gobbled an omelette spewing butter from the inside out. I drink a petite carafe of red wine. It was a delicious way to move on to more agendas under the presence of Sacre Coeur.

My morning baguette still resting inside my jacket, I ran to make quick snaps. Statues and the Eiffel filled my lens. I think my heart almost flatlined when I realized I was late to meet the director of the Centre Pompidou (Beaubourg). There of course was the Metro. But young and eyes that felt magnetized by everything French and France, my feet flew.

Brassai’s Cat was waiting for me among Montmarte staircase shadows. I stood alone sensing that everything behind me and in front of me was vanishing. I became emblazoned and unhinged in order to save myself from failure. I was on the cusp of something. I needed to realize that success and accomplishment stood before me. I had a decision to make.

Hundreds of steps seemed to out pace my gait to the flats. Breathless steps, intricate visuals. With Enya’s “Orinoco Flow between my ears I continued to dance down the steps. This is what I enlisted for: A photographer’s life in Paris.

The day was to become a burden of joy. A sense of belonging, a sense of what the future had planned. A window to the heart had opened. I am not sentimentally swayed.

I walked into the Beaubourg Directors’ office. We were informally introduced by someone I had met from the Gallery Maeght. Without hesitation he handed me a piece of note paper with artists’ names and addresses listed.

“I already called ahead for you. Jean Dubuffet is expecting you to arrive at 2:00. Roberto Matta is expecting you at 3:00”. I interrupted and mentioned that I had a 4:00 appointment with the art critic Pierre Restany followed by a portrait session with Roland Topor. The Director suggested that I have a choice: I can cancel appointments with Dubuffet and Matta and do what I want with Topor and Restany, or?

I made the choice that I have always made: I will do it all.

Jean Dubuffet danced the soft shoe for 30-45 minutes without letting me in his studio.

Matta seemed to think he was a character in the 1930s “The Shadow” I kept close to his door. I tried to understand what his intentions were. I might have heard in his French or Spanish, “The Shadow Knows”. An afternoon of mystery was surprisingly exhilarating. Were the cagey encounters valuable? In hindsight the obvious answer is yes. But of course for another blog and time to share their reality.

The renowned art critic Pierre Restany made me think of Rodin’s “Balzac”. Pierre was brilliant and generous. His tiny 3-4 hundred square foot space felt like Lilliputian corridors. His collection of art history books were begging me to jump inside. The ghosts of art’s past had secrets for me if I would only step inside. I realized that this library was an homage to books seen and not seen. I bowed to Pierre. I was privileged.

I told him about my day and my stay in Paris. He suggested I move to Paris. He was willing to open a million doors (and books) for me. I hinted at what I needed to accomplish in New York first. He gave me his French smile, “your loss”.

And so I was gone.

I had two more stops on this day’s Parisian run.

Roland Topor upon first glance appeared to be a giant dough boy. He was tall with unique features. But behind this unique countenance was a creative force who I wish I had known all of my life.

Roland was smart and witty. He shared his past. He shared his drawings he made for Fellini and Herzog. He shared his book cover for “The Tenant” (which Polanski turned into a movie). Then, like a magicians wave of the wand, in walked Roland’s father Abram.

I don’t know how many languages I can say “Wow” in. But Roland had spent maybe thirty minutes explaining how the “Tenant” was about his father’s life in Poland and later in France. Suddenly this tiny little aged giant walks into room. The magic made my heart skip a beat.

My energy had vanished. The day had drained me in the most enjoyable way. But I still had this last picture to make and another appointment. I realized I had tried to make too much happen in a single day. Abram sat down and smiled. Roland stood near his father. I yelled “stop!!”. The two looked in different directions. I snapped the my Nikons shutter. They were frozen, I froze the moment. “My god” I said. That was the picture. Still exhausted, I explained the image.

Over coffee and cakes we talked for another half hour or so about their art, their space and I wish so much more.

I slipped out of their home at twilight. I was to be a guest of honor at a cocktail/dinner evening.

I would have much to share that evening.

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Math, Science and My Heart See Architectures’ Light in London

December 30, 2021

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes”.

Marcel Proust

When we travel, we discover something akin to standing on the margin of an oceans’ expanse: We marry the colors of light sometimes with Kaleidoscope eyes. Our vision is shaped for every moment to follow. When we travel for architecture, we stand face to face with the world’s designs. We are embracingly on the margins of architectural discovery.

When I travel in my mind or across continents, I know before I know that I will have a visual revelation. It will be a moment that will titillate my gait with a movement that was till then, slumbering. Some may call it dance, but it is more like a Squirrel Monkey on steroids. My mind’s eye realizes that to miss a moment is to fail as a photographer. And so I continue.

It is a bit too easy to quote cinematic title when it comes to how I embrace my emotions while shooting. I travel to lands near and far and become comfortable citing movies and visual treats to keep my Hippocampus stimulated: Flemings’ From Russia with Love. Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows. O’Toole’s Lawrence of Arabia. Meryl’s Out of Africa. Bertolucci’ s The Last Emperor. Akira’s Ran. Those and one thousand other movies have spirited me away to dreams I may never have known. Movies have always been married to my subconscious. Their color narratives jump inside everyone of my photographs.

The greatest lesson I have learned as a photographer of architectural design, is that the photograph you are looking at is not the photograph you are looking for.

I ran across London’s streets filled with history’s reflections. critic Walter Benjamin held my eyes while I raced. His Arcades drove me mad at every corner. I kept seeing more than was in front of me. Every step, every reflection revealed history’s present past. British voices guided my paths: Shakespeare, Jonson and Johnson, Conan Doyle, De Quincey, Hitchens and the Cockburn family all enveloped my ears like Dre’s Beats.

“Look look!!” they said.

After weeks of running into shadows and mist, I began to feel besieged by fatigue.

I stood for hours in front of Sir Norman Fosters’ Gherkin. Yes it has a real name. But when I was lost (which for me is as common as morning and night) and asked for directions; “Gherkin was most commonly attributed.

I made the photograph that needed to be made. But upon completion, I saw something that lifted my spirits. It was this shard of cobalt blue. I was spellbound. I left my bags where I stood. I was exhausted but excited.

I moved as if I was hunting my first and last meal. The picture had to matter. I had my Pentax 6x7 loaded. I felt like I was teaching in a workshop or seminar. It was as if I was saying to my students: “watch how I capture this, follow my eyes. This is what you do in the moment, when you need to be ready to be focused, to be alive. Not a word, hardly a breath. I shot the scene. I shot a still life. I blinked and suddenly the lights turned off. I got my Cartier Bresson, I got my Ansel Adams. The picture was no longer, but on my film it was laid to rest.

The spirit took flight and then there was light.

If you will imagine planes, trains and automobiles replaced by trains, buses and automobiles, you will allow me to share London as an imaginative race. I pressed the medal on the pedal across the afternoon. I didn’t really want to go to Peckham. I was too tired of racing. But as you might know, I must! And so I did.

I had stopped in Greenwich (the home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian of the world) to shoot the Royal Observatory. When you exit the Observatory, you find yourself looking across the Brittania Royal Naval College. On a sunny day the view is spectacular. Then you walk along the marina where you will discover in and around the college great designs new and old. Leaving the area you will saunter by some restaurants and pubs. After about a mile and a half you will come face to face with Herzog and De Meuron’s Laban Dance Center. If you are not exhausted by then, off to Peckham you should go. It isn’t a great town upon first review. A pub pint or two will give everything an elevated glow.

After you run around the Peckham library and stand to the backside at sunset, you will see this expansive almost emerald green park lawn. When your eyes focus a bit more, you will be pleasantly surprised to see the park lawn roll into the the bobbing Thames and London’s glistening Shard and so much more holding court. Is there a better dreamscape?

I glanced at the sky. The sun was setting. I could shoot at night, but I had a plan that I needed to stick to. Yes I had made a few navigational missteps. Every transport had a stop. I raced to the next and the next. The light was getting so low that I began screaming in my mind. I knew the light would hold, but really? Would it?

I pranced, I begged someone to tell me if I was near Peckham. The driver yelled “Peckham next stop”. I jumped out. I asked for directions to architect Will Alsop’s library, with the surfboard on top. “Five streets” I was told. The sky was losing the sun. I was too exhausted to run, but I did.

There was only one position that mattered. But I chose three. The Pentax seemed like fifty pounds. I loaded fresh film and pressed down ten of the fastest frames I have ever made.

Honestly out of the one hundred London buildings I photographed on that adventure, it was among the unremarkable. But when I returned home, it glowed. It was something that I had not seen while shooting. I have grown to love this moment. Seconds of one afternoon proved amazingly transformative.

After a pint from a nearby pub, the “Tube” back to my hotel allowed me to reflect on the energy necessary to create. You cannot doubt your strength. You cannot deny your motivation and creative spirit. Most importantly you must allow the photograph to breathe for you. Baby, when it does it is just…

The Night

My last night in London I remembered I had neglected to make a photograph. I needed to see a simple Tadao Ando. I managed to grab a taxi. I pressed the driver to accelerate. We passed through streets. The meter numbers$$$ rose. I arrived outside the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair. Tadao Ando’s pool of mist whispered.

I scurried out of the taxi. I suddenly realized this found moment would be my final shooting memory for this trip.

I had nipped around London’s borders for weeks. I was always consumed by making the moment more than necessary. But Ando’s quiet reminder that architecture’s simplicity can deliver such a fantastic punch to the heart was an exciting jolt. The quietest keys in my mind whispered to me: “this is your moment, live it”. And I did. I swept my hands over the water. I walked the roundabout. I stepped away from curious eyes.

I hopped back in the taxi. I turned 180 in the car. I snapped. My camera Pentax 6x7 snapped another of the many Ando’s projects. The taxi carried/drove me to my hotel.

The filmed image was my final reward. I realized that sometimes the color of light at night, might have been just right.

Tadao Ando’s Whispering Pond in front of the Connaught Hotel; Mayfair District, London

TWO SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS IN A CAREER: CHARLES EGAN AND LEO CASTELLI/ILEANA SONNABEND

December 09, 2021

Let’s live for the beauty of our own reality:

“ Charles Lamb”

I remember:

The searing Spanish light appeared to make me seem naked in my hotel window reflection. I stared down at the frenzied Mayor Plaza in Madrid. I was trying to recall glimpses of experiences from my previous three days. Romantic memories of art history stirred my imagination. It is what happens when when I am alone. I reimagined the hypnotic myth of Chaim Soutine: His eyes saw red rubies and green sapphires dancing in the sands of Saint-Tropez. He scampered towards his benefactor Alfred Barnes like an addict chasing a fix. My phone rang. It was a call I had expected.

Photo by Andre Kertesz : My impression of Charles Egan walking alone In Barcelona

The American art dealer Charles Egan was calling from Barcelona. Egan was among maybe three New York art dealers (Depending who you speak to) who opened their doors to Abstract Expressionism artists.

Egan’s voice was aged and halting. Before I could begin my Q&A with him, he blurted out, “I only have a few minutes”. I had traveled from New York to Spain to photograph him. Fortunately he granted me at least a chat. Two hours later I had this picture in my mind of a scruffy old man in an oversized woolen coat chasing Las Ramblas night shadows in Barcelona. The shadows hid him from certain truths. If only he could catch one shadow and step into darkness forever. I always felt he was trying to figure out a way to live and die simultaneously.

I listened as he spoke with an inelegant charm. The manner in which Egan shared his life among artists, lured me towards artists of a certain age. They had been”there”. It didn’t matter where, but “there”.

Egan never sat for my camera. Still, 1982 was a banner year. I had photographed a bit more than 50 London and New York art dealers. Most were unique. A template for living was beginning to take form. Artists like Dekooning and Noguchi had sat for me. Miro and Dali were coming up.

For the next 10 years my art world life sped on a hyperloop. Oddly enough, I wasn’t aware that my camera was capturing the new world’s art world in Soho New York and more.

This was just about the time I met Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend.

Generational Giants

Soho was the center of the art world universe for near two decades. Yet If the power broker and master of his own universe Robert Moses had his way, Soho would have become an american industrial disaster. Moses envisioned a Baron Haussmann like renovation of Paris. Today, Soho would not exist and Walter Benjamin’s “Arcades” would be even a sadder historical recount of what we had lost.

Soho helmed some of the finest artists in the world. They came to pay homage to New York, but in Soho. Among the most powerful art dealers the world represented a collection of those artists. In one particular building in New York, 420 West Broadway seemed to be like a scene from Ghostbusters. The building used to throb with power. Nothing seemed to pass through the city without Leo and Ileana knowing about it.

Other dealers and artists were very successful and some very powerful. But the word on the streets was whispered, “Castelli…Sonnabend”. It wasn’t that they were Mr and Mrs Corleone. Their marriage was over years before. Their successful influence on their “stable” seemed to out run most other galleries.

Certainly other dealers made a considerable impact on the art world: Pace, Cooper, Emmerich easily come to mind. It is not my intention to measure celebrity. But when Leo and I made an arrangement to photograph his artists, I realized I was given the key to the knights of the kingdom: Lichtenstein, Warhol, Johns, Serra, Stella and…

When Sonnabend allowed me to photograph Koons, Gilbert and George and many more, I realized that I was photographing royalty and budding squires. I was enriched by the experience. More importantly because Castelli and Sonnabend had suggested entree for me, no door was left unopened. It was a privilege that few could offer.

The collection of maybe 100 art dealers, and maybe 500 artists I have photographed wasn’t because of those two celebrated dealers. I had already been with the above mentioned Dekooning, Noguchi, Miro and Dali and, and, and. But their names carried a weight that was a catapult in directions unimagined. What followed were many exotic, stupefying, mind numbing, life changing stories that occurred because of my sessions with artists. Those stories and more are for another time. My photographic life has been akin to a genetic map.

Looking in the rear view mirror is a bit too easy. But sometimes it illustrates the obvious: The cache that the names Castelli and Sonnabend carried was a particular cashmere that I will never have again.

FOUR FLAWLESS DIAMONDS UNDER ONE ROOF:Ando, Kelly, Serra and Pulitzer

November 22, 2021

Pulitzer Arts Foundation Designed by Tadao Ando

I never wanted a life, I wanted to live.

The photographer’s perfect experience is akin to seeing light enter all 58 facets (“the round brilliant cut”)of a diamond”: My light, God’s light, what’s the difference as long as it is perfect.

Everyday I lift my camera, I never want to imagine hearing an aching Marlon Brando “I coulda been a contender…”. I merely want to experience what it feels like to make a flawless photograph.

One day in St Louis I realized I was near to making the most elegant portrait in my career. I was instructing my subject to step to the rise in this gallery space. This doyenne of society strode upwards step by step. I encouraged her to step just below the rise. I imagined my light might see Hydra’s nine heads. I imagined my light might see Cruella de Vil. Instead I saw the 58 facets of perfection. Emily Pulitzer presented herself regally to my lens. She stood married to Ellsworth Kelly’s “Blue Black” painting. The framing was majestic. I snapped the shutter.

The portrait session was a bit tense. She was a bit guarded. We talked about my portrait sessions of her architect (for the Pulitzer Arts Foundation)the great Tadao Ando. I suggested to her that in the moment the artists in her galleries, Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Serra may be the art worlds best ambassadors. We found common ground. The pressure disappeared.

How Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly, and Tadao Ando came together to share the Pulitzer Arts Foundation story is Ms. Pulitzer’s to tell. My story is much simpler. I merely made snaps of these four unique personalities.

Richard Serra Sculpture for The Pulitzer Arts Foundation

My visit to the St. Louis “Foundation”enabled me to walk the corridors of visual delights. I roamed as one might through the ruins of the Acropolis, through the luxuries of art in the Louvre. I wouldn’t compare the Pulitzer to either aforementioned. But when you are alone in art institutions (I have had the good fortune to walk unattended the corridors of the Tate, the Louvre, the Hermitage, the Prado, and many more…)you begin to think the likes of Carlos Castaneda or Lewis Carroll have set your axons and neurons on fire. It is dreamily scary and uplifting. The moments allow you to commune with the imaginative minds of Picasso, Raphael, Goya, Velazquez and a million other creative geniuses.

What you realize spectacularly about genius, is that forces from unknown intellectual universes of the mind are at work. Emily Pulitzer brought three genius minds to St Louis.

St Louis seemed to have died in 1893. The Chicago World’s Fair seemed to eclipse (at the time) everything west of Chicago. The world focused east. Some people today say, God Bless The St Louis Cardinals for the city’s revival. Maybe the Pulitzer’s among a few saved the city. I don’t know. But there is something there that is quite unique. I think St Louis is an interesting city. Yes it has the Saarinen Arch. But there is much more: Exquisite examples of architecture, culture and social and political mores that are quite rich. Possibly a broader conversation for another blog.

THE FOUR DIAMONDS:

My photography life has not been about the universe, the big theme. Instead I have always felt married to singular moments in time.

My afternoon with Richard Serra was brutal. He was brutal. But I was rewarded by his no holds barred concentration on what mattered to him: the artist making art. I was along for the ride while he made his art. I was allowed to be with him in his moment. It stays with you sometimes like that constant beating sound in an MRI exam.

Ellsworth Kelly who I had photographed a couple of times interpreted his no holds barred. He declared “his space, his time, his art”. He may have loved my portraits. But nothing took the place of making his art uninterrupted.

Tadao Ando has created masterpieces across the planet, but nothing interrupts his process. My multiple sessions with him are precious to me because for him no holds barred is about life itself. Maybe that is among the many reasons he was considered a brawler. To the end he will declare his singular independence within the quietude of his work.

Emily Pulitzer let me know when her time was up. Do what I want she intimated. She had me understand, her time like Ando, Serra and Kelly was precious. Her effective strength fills a space like no other. It seems “no holds barred” is a rallying expression for the four unique personalities.

Alone, I sauntered, I waltzed. Alone I was mesmerized by the presence of four souls who impressed me like few others. Alone and alive, I realize the breadth of my moments, cameras in hand.

PLAY MISTY FOR ME: Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Gwathmey, Shigeru Ban, SANNA

November 01, 2021

Frank Lloyd Wrights Designed Carmel Home

Frank Lloyd Wright
Charles Gwathmey
Shigeru Ban
SANNA

My grandmother once told me she heard what sounded like someone’s annoying tinkering on a piano in the apartment next door to where she lived. She said that the neighbor was a black man. His name was something like Errol Garner. I can only imagine what the jazz giant’s piano’s white ivories sounded like. Who knows, I might have heard the keys of (Erroll Garner plays Misty - YouTube )playing during my weekly visits to see my grandmother. I just might have heard the lyrics spoken by Ella Fitzgerald. Hey, why not? Errol lived next to my grandmother, Ella lived a block away from me. Can’t you hear the god’s symphony? It is the kind of whacko angelic reverie that my eyes and ears tango with daily.
The phantasms of that teenager stepping through those cultural corridors, unaware of the greatness at hand seems like a long ago episode of psilocybin rampaging through the blood stream.
My camera has been heartbreakingly in love with all images that have stories to tell. My camera gets to live in the present and share stories of my past for the future. It is a passion I cannot live without. My eyes have lingered over imagery that mere oral stories can’t tell. I have learned to allow the lens to linger so I can dream about what I might see.

I Learned To Linger From:

Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne used to spend Christmas lingering at the Ritz in Paris. They had “their“ table. They told me that lingering at the Ritz allowed them to gain perspective: Perspective on their present and their good fortunes. I have for years tried to reconcile the Joan enjoying the finest Champagne in Paris, from the Joan who has written about Los Angeles in the most ironic voice in contemporary literature. How do you parley Joans measure of Parisian haute living, from her searing essays that imply chaos may live behind the pastoral American dream white picket fences. Well, if Joan lingers, I can linger.
One day in Carmel California, I was standing in front of a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I imagined I heard Didion speak to me. I could never tell you what I think she said. It would be cause for a bed in the asylum. I also imagined I heard “Play Misty For Me” director Clint Eastwood yelling “action”. Joan and Clint as one? Both inspirations on numerous levels. I have always communed with voices from lives lived. It is a cracked way of living, but that is what happens when I am alone. Simply put: it adds dimensions to what and how my camera sees.
The fabulous Charles Gwathmey used to call me when I was shooting something of his. He would say “get it right kid”. I knew what he meant. He told me many times what I should be looking for. I didn’t have Frank Lloyd Wright in my ear when I shot the Carmel house. But I did stir up every voice that came before that day. I think it worked.
In Tokyo there was another version of “Misty”. But I think it was merely imagining the Garner and Fitzgerald duo cushioning my loneliness. Alone in a foreign land is exhilarating, but alone. Every waking moment introduces celluloid love. Swimming in the planets cultures is Alices’ wonderland, my wonderland. The only voice you hear is your own. The visual awakening is life changing.
Quiet rains and my camera queried strangers. I needed to capture two exemplary homes by the emerging architects SANNA and Shigeru Ban. Yukio Mishima supplanted Didion and whispered “Misty”. The music was an unimaginable romance for me. It helped me embrace the new phenomenons before my eyes: Architectures present future.
My gait acquired a bit of Baryshnikov/Gregory Hines from “White Nights”. My camera went snippety snap snap snap. I finished engaging two of the world’s new architectural voices. Their stories and more from Japan will follow.
I shifted my photography gears. I espied an elderly Japanese woman dressed in all white. Her pink umbrella cast the perfect visual spell. The street was long, empty and misty.

Charles Gwathmey Designed home for Hollywood producer

Pop,Pop,Pop Goes the Weasel Pop Art

October 14, 2021

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river

With tangerine trees and marmalade skies

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly

A girl with kaleidoscope eyes”.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

By the Beatles

London, New York, Los Angeles and beyond all hold a special place for history’s Pop Art. From Jasper Johns to Keith Haring, Hirst and Koons. I was fortunate to photograph a rambling collection of cultural icons and form an interesting life. I was transported across oceans and continents to capture faces and places. It was an interesting life. My career has had quite a bit of pop.

I arrived at the Guggenheim Museum to get the inimitable Walter Hopps. It almost sounds like I was a cop making an arrest. Possibly it was more akin to Mogambo’s Clark Gable hunting for either Ava or Grace. Many esteemed personalities needed to be captured. I had amassed dozens of prominent Pop Artists from the hot point of the 50s and the 60s. The curator Walter Hopps, was essential.

When I landed on the museums’ fourth floor, I found Walter and Robert Rauschenberg congregating atop two ladders like gushing imps bursting with secrets. I had photographed Rauschenberg three times before that date. I had never met Hopps before that day. He invited me up to join them on the ladders. It was a wee bit crowded. Walter came down to me. He said, “lets take a walk. I get the feeling that you have been following me for years”.

Peter Blake: Sergeant Peppers Album Cover Designer

Robert Rauschenberg: My second Portrait session

“The real voyage of discovery consisted not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes”.

Marcel Proust

Walter was and had been at the forefront of the Pop Artist movement. He was my

“Whale”. His planetary orbit like mine was almost encyclopedic: Pop Pop’s included artists Johns, Rauschenberg, Oldenburg, Ruscha, Warhol, Rosenquist, Lichtenstein Billy Al Bengston, Wayne Thiebaud, Peter Blake, David Hockney, Jim Dine, George Segal and more Pop. Art Dealers like Sydney Janis, Irving Blum, Hopps and more gave the world a peek into what the new eyes were seeing and creating. My camera captured and celebrated those who were POP in POP ART.

As we walked from level to level of the museum, Hopps quizzed me about the aforementioned artists and more. He had spent a career looking at the art. I had spent part of a career looking at the faces and spaces of artists.

I told Walter that I was surprised “Sergeant Pepper’s” Peter Blake seemed like a time bomb about to pop. Peter Max seemed popped. But the California crew and the New York powerhouses seemed like they were always in the phase of creating new phases. I had photographed a number of them more than once. There was always a sense of the same but an additional transitional execution. Maybe this is a common theme among great artists.

The brief scurrying around the Guggenheim was about to come to an end. It seemed like one hundred stellar Bob Rauschenberg’s became a “Pop” collage that I may not remember. But I do remember that one of the great curators of an era long gone had entertained me as a conductor might lead an orchestra: with sweeping gestures he hypnotized me with his quiet brilliance.

I didn’t “get” my Walter Hopps. I think there might be a bad snap somewhere of Bob and Walter on the ladders. I will need to remind myself to look through the archives. I just follow what the camera sees. I hope it snapped that moment.

Ed Ruscha: The first of my Portrait sessions with Ed

“Make Way For Tomorrow” Meets Hollywood Babylon.

September 13, 2021

Georgia O’Keefe once said;

“It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest”. I think about that line often. I think about when I was supposed to photograph her. I think how she painted. I think about how she lived. I think about that line often. When a god’s millenniums reaches up and grabs you, it is time to asses the value of a life lived. I was a child when I first looked through a camera. It felt so odd to be so young and feel so aged simultaneously. Maybe the memory of the Minox, Stereo Camera, Contax ,Nikons and Pentax 67 remind me of my photography film history. I never had to travel to look back on where I have been. But where I have been metaphorically and geographically has enlivened my spirits in a way that is unique to me. Imagine a jellyfish slip-sliding above and between your organs. Imagine the moment the jellyfish slightly stings your heart. Imagine life’s pleasures dancing in your mind. The stimulating shock is what makes us human. It is why that moment in time charges every blood vessel within reach to burn through my memory bank and say thank you.

Hollywood Babylon is sort of a catchphrase for filmdom’s past debauchery. One phase of my career brought me to filmdoms’ Hollywood to capture an assemblage of art collectors. Cinematic lore was at my fingertips. I was anticipating discovering the truths behind Errol Flynn’s stealth passages at his Beverly Hills home. Maybe Charlie Chaplins’ secrets from his sailboat? Just possibly more conservatively, I wanted to know how Hollywoods machine worked. Joan Didion inferred there is less there than we need to know.

The great art collections of Edward G Robinson, Vincent Price, Billy Wilder and more were diminished by bitter divorces. The next generation of Hollywood aficionados: Michael Ovitz, Norman Lear and dozens more sat for my camera. The Hollywood poseurs always turned the conversation towards me and my life photographing all of the artists in “their” collections”. I am convinced that I was a naked pawn in a game I was not aware of. It was always a presumption that I knew more than my subjects did about art. They studied every brush stroke, I only snapped the shutter speed. Every subject massaged my ego. It always seemed as if Johann Strauss’ “Blue Danube” enveloped the rooms. We waltzed. Hollywood led, I followed. A funny history I remember.

Henry Miller once said;

He was “alive in a dream”. I always felt dreams were my reality. My inspirations as always come from the possibilities that there is a truth in film. Films like “Make Way For Tomorrow”, “Diva”, or even “Dingo”were not masterpieces. (Though it was said somewhere that “Make Way For Tomorrow” was Orson Welles favorite film.) In movies I found heart, a visual gasp, and sound. I almost always exited the screen feeling that my life is a dream, and I am living it. Sometimes I felt emboldened by the moment. It was as if the jellyfish was tingling my senses.

Norman Lear:

He was my first stop. I remember driving through the homes of Brentwood. This day predated Steve Martin’s Grand Canyon movie where all of the characters were afraid of anyone that did not look like themselves. This moment was a ride through a serenity laden paradise. “Mr. Lear is waiting for you”. “All in the Family” and too many years in front of the tube danced between my ears. I was a pleasure seeker walking into a piece of heaven. No kinder person has sat before my camera than Norman Lear. I have mentioned many times in my blogs that my poseurs wanted to know more about me than they would share about themselves. Maybe they were uncertain how to explain their art collecting. Maybe this was a privacy turn. I will never know. The most famous person in television was sharing his home and his time. I gave him my most nimble dance. I displayed all of my tools of lighting. The morning felt like a stream of evanescent lighting. The end was near. I told Norman the session was complete. He placed his hat on his head. We walked hand in hand. I made a few snaps from room to room. We visually touched 20 to 30 pieces of art. “I never thought I would ever have so many beautiful things”. The lone confession put all of the salacious debauchery I imagined to rest. Art mattered.

Daniel Melnick:

Producer Daniel Melnick seemed to check all of the boxes. He was famous. He produced “Straw Dogs”, “All That Jazz” and “Altered States” among many. I felt he was the guy to chat about my love for film. He was very proud. His accomplishments reigned, His home movie center was fabulous. He loved his world. We didn’t get too much of a chance to discuss his art collecting or movies. The pleasantries and platitudes rained on the afternoon. We stood in front of one of his mementos from his collecting days. He suggested we should make the Lichtenstein my moment. After that shot we walked a bit. Took in the scenery. He took a step back and asked me if I wanted to shoot the stills for “Air America” starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. Without hesitation I said yes!!! In the end I didn’t get the job. Hollywood is made up of some unique bedfellows. I never mastered Hollywood speak. Melnick did have a great home.

Thom Mount:

Thom Mount is one of the few Hollywood personalities whose personality seemed to embody his “Bull Durham” star Kevin Costner. I enjoyed that film enormously. I am a huge Baseball fan. The plot line romanticized the game with great humor and style. I never met Kostner, but Thom Mount seemed to have a Kostner-esque built into his mannerisms. For the most part I am with my subjects sometimes for 5 minutes and sometimes for many hours. There was something endearing and smart about Thom. His other films like “The Indian Runner” and “Death And The Maiden” (both of which I liked) didn’t seem to have the producers character winking at you. Bull Durham’s Crash Davis and Thom Mount were like twins on a dance floor. He was so much fun to watch and listen to. We spoke about shooting stills on the sets. “You are a portrait photographer, shooting amazing people”. I know, but I love film. It might be interesting to be the next great Cinematographer Robby Müller…or Cinematographer Richard Schulman. I told him that Frederick Elmes once invite me to a set while he was shooting. After about fifteen minutes, I ran out like Eduard Munch’s “The Scream”. My god what was I thinking. Hundreds of people about. The thought of claustrophobia almost killed me. Mount continued the tour of his collection. He was a terrific guide, and a fabulous personality. So many years later I still enjoy diving into dozens or hundreds of films with gluttonous pleasure. But the lingering feeling about Hollywood is that it leaves me a bit apart. It is as if I am dangling my toes from a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. As my toes dip deeper into the waters, I am frightened and curious at once. I scream asking, what is down there in that abyss known as Hollywood.

Producer Daniel Melnick with Lichtenstein sculpture

The Art That Is Heaven In Los Angeles

August 27, 2021

The past is intoxicating. It is like being driven to nakedness by the music in your dreams. It is where youth ruled by inexperience. Experience begot me.

From time to time I find myself rummaging through my archives. I am usually looking for something I think I have lost. I discover what was there all along. The map of a life lived.

I am a native Angeleno. Today New York is my home. I left Los Angeles to find a fuse to light. I needed to catch on fire. I never felt that extra gear until I moved to New York.

The energy in Los Angeles always seemed to be eluding me. Maybe lost behind some steering wheel. I am not exactly sure. Los Angeles seemed to always have the rhythm of a resort town. I liked the clothes.

One day in 1988 I returned to LA for a project. For a number of years beginning in 1983 and continuing in 1988 I traveled between New York and Los Angeles with dozens of intermittent orbital stops. I made thousands of images: I made portraits, quietly photographed hundreds of architectural accomplishments. I found visual life on the streets of LA. I partially realized my dream of recording a city to the specifications of a mash of literary chroniclers like Joan Didion, Walter Mosley and more. Something was coalescing.

My visits had me venturing east, west, north and south. I drove cars with great speed. From Pasadena to Malibu and destinations in between. A speed that was mostly harnessed by freeway traffic at all hours. In one particular eventful day I tried to photograph society patron Laura Lee Woods in Bel Air, society patron Caroline Ahmanson at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, and arts patron Marcia Weisman in the Trousdale Estates. I was rocked by the cars always in front of me.

Arts Patron and Collector Lauralee Woods

LauraLee’s words were always soft and laced with hidden swords in every breath.

She was elegance personified with a great sense of humor. I remember returning to her home to present in a slide show my portrait results. She didn’t have any wall space. So we sat on the top of her steps..and viewed the images on a white Agnes Martin canvas. ”Agnes would kill me if she knew. Do you want to photograph my neighbor Joan Rivers?”.

Caroline’s knowingly wink screamed, “there are no failures in my life”. When we made our portrait at MOCA (Architect Arata Isozaki’s design) Caroline suggested we shoot in front of this glass structure, She said, “why not, I paid for it”.

Arts Patron and Collector Caroline Ahmanson

Marcia the gentle gruff queen that embraced you with the whispering words, “just follow my lead”. Everyone talks about the exposure to the sun in Los Angeles. When great art is discovered in great homes, the intoxication can be debilitating. It was Marcia, (sister to Norton Simon) who seemed to sing to me that first afternoon; She sat me down in her vintage corrugated Frank Gehry chair. Her hands on hips and bellowed like the lead in Gypsy, “what can I do for you?”. She was so lovely towards me. Even when suggesting I call her brother’s wife the actress Jennifer Jones( that was a fascinating conversation for another time) to get access to Norton. You could feel the overwhelming generosity. Though at times it seemed part hesitation in her eyes, and part “let me lend a hand” to this naive boy. She did share the advantages of her little black book. I knew I couldn’t screw up this charitable trust.

When we finally moved to shoot the portrait, Marcia embraced the standing Roy Lichtenstein “Mirror”. Whatever she wanted was fine with me. I think at that time she may have had the best contemporary collection in Los Angeles.

Sometimes I wish I could have that day back. There was an art to being a woman in the Los Angeles’ cultural hierarchy. Those women, decades before “MeToo”, let the men in town know that they were not going to back down to any wolf trying to huff and puff and blow their worlds down. There was so much more the three women could have shared over time. Time just wasn’t on my side.

I have learned that when time is your enemy, anything that these powerful people are willing to share, you accept this gift without hesitation. I sit here this moment celebrating my good fortunes.

My days usually came to a close somewhere between Sunset and Pico Blvd. Inching along on one of the blvds. The top down. The sun blinded my senses like “The Effect of the Gamma Rays on the Man-in- the Moon Marigolds”. I was stranded behind thousands of other travelers who were also wondering about their days.

I had a collective of women’s voices traveling through my mind. The voices from societies’ doy-ennes, artists, curators, dealers and more floated above. The concerns about how or if I was going to use my portraits. It was almost out of a scene from Hitchcock’s “Suspicion”. Overtime I calmed their concerns

I learned overtime that they wanted to share their world. It was alien to me. I was not familiar with the generosity. But of course I say that now so many years removed. This learning thing is difficult.

Architectural Journey

August 13, 2021

Architectural Journey

Thom Mayne: Back side of San Francisco Federal Building

Dawn in Paris. I was a teenager. I hitched a ride on a semi-truck. I was heading to the south of France. The driver made a delivery stop at a restaurant in Lyon. He came out and told me I should go in. There was a meal waiting for me. The restaurant belonged to Paul Bocuse. I was a bit disoriented. A story for another time.

When I was reminded of that moment in time, I realized that my eyes have traveled thousands of miles. When my eyes travel I see everything that needs to be seen anew.

Sotto Voce

The tallest person in the room. I stood up. I felt a deep breath. Then sotto voce I breathed “I have something to share”.

In one of the more august rooms of the architectural community: Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman, Stanley Tigerman, Zaha Hadid among 25 or 30 anchored by Yale University Dean Robert Stern. I needed to share my opinion.

This moment was an Architecture Graduate School Yale Review. It was presided over by Greg Lynn. Greg had invited me for about 5-6 years. He motioned for me to continue. The whole room knew me, but wondered why a photographer was present in an architecture critique. The answer is simple. Why not share how one should see architecture.

I began by addressing Frank Gehry. “You do know that without me, (photographers) you would not be so famous”. Yes, yes, yes there was a hush. Robert Stern placed his hands on my back as if to say “watch yourself”. I was merely addressing the visual truth: great photographs celebrate great architecture and more. Photography that resembles a rendering and a rendering that resembles photography is not the art of photographing architecture.

The students appreciated my insanity. My point was actually simple: architecture needs to certainly address how space is utilized for the betterment of mankind and community. The camera captures the architects design manifestation and reveal. The photographer is paramount. Without a visual narrative the architecture might not be discovered beyond local inhabitants and the august community. John Keats speaks for the photographer: “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty…”

I share the above because the camera is such an insurmountable tool. It allows for the experience with architecture to be embraced. Is there a better love affair than that?

I have experienced many moments that have shaped my vision in the most profound way. Architects have appeared as whispering angels almost every time I stand before the moments. They are the ones who have given me the confidence to explore the way architecture should look.

The Soft Shoe

I have spent decades listening to architects share ideas about exploring the possibilities that may exist for their work.

I spent a few precious hours chatting with Paolo Soleri. He invited me to Arizona to see his Arcosanti Desert Utopia. He told me that he merely wanted to share his journey with my camera. He said, Wouldn’t it be exciting to see what photographs may come from the one on one experience. If you merely listen, I think you will see something special”.

Bernard Tschumi: Florida International University

My heart remembers the cell phone call to Bernard Tschumi. He wanted to walk me via AT&T about his Florida International University shapely colors.

I remember standing on a corner in San Francisco waiting to hear Thom Mayne share some visual priorities regarding his Federal Building. The temperament his words carried became a visual celebration for me. Though my photographs might not resemble his mindset.

Thom Mayne: Morphosis San Francisco Federal Buildin

I remember Richard Meier waltzed me in and around the Getty. He needed to show me what Richard Meier saw. Certainly a welcomed gift. Our strides increased as he felt motivated to show me everything that mattered.

I remember Charles Gwathmey wanted to prepare me for his celebrated client. The architecture experience in Malibu design was paramount. Charlie wanted to make certain that I not only glide through with my best impression of the old soft shoe but continue to slide effortlessly in and around the details.

We always need to dance. My whole life has been a soft shoe experiment with camera in hand. My pictures don’t always coincide with the architects needs. But the experience lives. Most importantly a realization that all architecture needs a camera that lends itself to the par excellence that is deserved.

Par Excellence

Many years ago I spoke to the Indian architect Charles Correa at length. I was trying to organize a portrait session with him. The telephone call was becoming expensive. After sometime I realized he was becoming too cheeky.

Before we hung up, I asked him if it was enough that he was the king of India.

He said that he should have listened to Corbusier. I think Correa meant that he should have adhered to the great Corbusier line, “when I design, the thing to do is see the building against the sky”. If I had met Corbusier. I would certainly share my photographs of buildings against the sky.

So many architects in my life. I have listened to so many voices. Those voices have contributed to the creation towards my own vision. I have learned that I must try to find par excellence in my work or fail.

In the end after all of my photographs are put to bed, I feel quietly like the tenor Enrico Caruso after his final performance as Canio in Pagliacci. The character stands alone. He poses, emotionally spent with a thousand rivulets cascading over every inch of his mind and body.

Sent from my iPad

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