My Eyes on the Art World. How Did I Get Here From There and Back

June 22, 2022

One night while dreaming about nothing, I realized I had inadvertently stepped into a ballroom dance hosted by Scientists and Sorcerers. Is there such a thing as a reality check occurring in a dream? They were odd consorts, but I was beginning to realize, that a “Rubik” mix of diversity is what made New York so unexpectedly exciting.

The very next day I received two commissions: One was from a scientist who was developing a laser for the military to shoot down enemy planes. The second commission was to photograph twenty-five famous art dealers from New York and twenty-five famous art dealers from London.

I cannot show you the laser pictures because they belong in the category of UFO’s abound. But a 3 person sampling from the 50 art dealers is a breeze.

The day started out looking like Thomas Edison’s master plan for illuminating all of New York City. A wave of circuits quietly coming to life across the city’s morning rise before the grid exploded tickling every sleeping feet in the metropolis.

I stood on the North-West corner of Fifty-Seventh and Fifth Ave. It is among the most remarkable corners in the world. Behind me sits Bergdorf’s. East of me sits Louis Vuitton. South-East sits Tiffany’s and South sits Bulgari. The cacophonous New York norm was about to envelop the city.

I seemed to reach to the skies and touch the floating holiday snowflake hovering above the four corners. Could New York’s world be mine. It sounds a bit like a science fiction conjuring with the help of a friendly Merlin. But my realities are almost always married to some kind of futuristic dreamscapes. I can’t fathom why my brain works that way.

Art Dealers have a bit of sorcery in them. They seem to magically make art desirable to the world. It is odd how some terrible artists become famous. But a bit of sorcery goes along way.

I remember listening to a dealer one day. He was explaining to a client, how fabulous the intentions of the artist were. He said to the client: “Now just watch this canvas. You will be startled to see the transformation of the artist’ palate change before your eyes. Now just watch the canvas. I am going to turn the lights all the up. I want you to see the colors as bright as possible. Voila! You see how yellow the yellow is with the lights so bright? Now I am going to dim the lights. Now pay attention! Watch how the colors remarkably change when the lights are dimmed? Now pay attention!! Voila! Can you see how the yellows in the painting have changed? That was an impossible feat by the artist! Like magic he transformed the colors before your eyes. All you have to do when you have this painting in your home is make certain you have a dimmer switch. You will then be able to entertain your family and friends with this same remarkable reality the artist has created. You cannot forget the dimmer switch!”

Three Generations of Art Dealers:

My day With Sidney Janis, Arne Glimcher and Mary Boone was another reality. But instead of mumbo jumbo from a conning art dealer, their conversations with me were about artists who transformed the idea of artist in the second half of the 20th century.

Sidney Janis shared his heart on his sleeve and passions for Pollock, Guston. Kline and Motherwell. Arne Glimcher was a listener. He wanted to know about me. But he also wanted to know what I thought of Louise Nevelson, Rauschenberg and Dubuffet. Mary Boone was raising the temperature in the art world representing Basquiat, Bleckner, Fischl and more. The dealers talked about art that mattered. They talked about the present state of art as it spoke to the past and the future. All I had to do that day was follow their lead and listen.

My early days as a photographer of people are remembered by me almost as an apparition. The days were so remarkably real. They were so long ago it is hard to believe how illuminating those moments were for me. How the days and sessions affected my perspective and emboldened my march forward is amazing. It was just a day with three remarkable art world movers and shakers that spilled over into a lifetime of memories.

The Blank Canvas and The Vanishing Artists

June 14, 2022

“AHA”.

Upon exiting the studios of artists, I felt like the great tenor, Enrico Caruso indelibly printed on a celluloid sheet manning the helm of Fitzcarraldo’s “Aida”. My personal dreamscape seemed like thousands of capillaries steering their way across avenues reaching from New York, Paris, London and Moscow. They obliged my temporary reverie as stand-ins for Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo’s” Peruvian Amazon. I was emboldened. Caruso bellowed, I bellowed, thousands of jungle species quivered; we all listened to Verdi’s Rigoletto.

My cameras have made portraits from Harlem, to the Lower East Side, across to Soho and TriBeCa. I have looked south from NYC’s 95th and 5th, west from Long Island City across the East River or across the Atlantic from trains heading south to north and east following west. Visceral thrills made a home inside my heart. I realize pictures in my mind every waking moment, and most often asleep with my dreams.

My artist portrait series began, with two reins held like divining rods guiding me like parallel forces towards the most significant art world of my times. In one direction youthful brilliance artists like Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat stood before me with galvanizing energy ready to slash and cover canvases with tantalizing exuberance. In another direction aged artists: Moore, Masson, Miro, and hundreds of aged maestros fifty and sixty years my senior frailly looked to challenge their waning faculties unless they were lucky enough to take a bite from the heart of Picasso: “Age only matters when one is aging. Now that I have arrived at a great age, I might as well be twenty.”

My vanishing present/past seems to race towards a far horizon like the speed of two chickens feigning orgasms

When I was impressionable, I wanted to be on a page inside Joyce’s Ulysses and feel what it was like to dance the dance with Joyce’s imagination. I wanted to be on a page of Homer’s Odyssey sensationalizing epic adventures. I wanted to be on a page inside Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast, mingling among the interesting. I wanted be inside Proust’s mind while he remembered “A Remembrance of Things Past”. I wanted to be among those who told the stories about lives lived. Those factual fictions belong to others. I belonged more to the school of Walter Benjamin’s “Arcades”: Not a story but the Bible on seeing photography. The Parisian Arcades held stories of relics from our vanishing history. I realized my vanishing past too held stories of another history: The history of artists. I photographed a legacy of creators. I remember holding their hands. My camera held the stoic gaze of fantastical beings. They are vanishing. Their remains are hidden like whispers inside my archives.

The archives define me to some degree. I rise every morning as if I am in a hurry to meet and welcome my friends past and present on the playground. Many had famous names: Miro, Johns, Warhol, Moore, Haring, Basquiat, de Kooning, Noguchi. Less famous: Pavia, Cavallon, McNeil, Tworkov, Pepper, Graves and thousands more are part of my history. The memories and images are my historical artifacts. I celebrate the living past in the kindest way.

Old Friends

I remember photographing Keith Haring. One half dozen images later I was done. There was an assembly line of photographers almost like paparazzi waiting for their turns. They sat with a dozen cameras and a thousand rolls of film. Nobody knew that Keith’s flame was about to be unexpectedly extinguished. While I was putting my equipment away, Keith asked if I was finished and do I need anything else? I looked at him, and the painting behind him. I took a quick two step to the canvas, and slid the back of my hand across the finished work…and sauntered out. The artist posed. I stole a surreptitious caress. It was the only way I could say goodbye to the day.

I have teetotal-led and exhaled a few cigarettes with thousands of people. I have become acquainted with what the last breath might look like. Yet I always snapped just the few needed frames and left the session behind me and marched forward like the ambitious misguided dreamer Fitzcarraldo.

The blank canvas was something the aged struggled with. I always thought of a blank canvas as euphemism for a rallying cry: something to challenge my day. My life has been imbued by life experiences. Shooting portraits produced indelible images that brandished my life’s visual sensibilities. I celebrate the fascinating chaos that it was, like surfers stepping into liquid.

Me, Mark Twain, Jackassrabbits, Baseball, Santiago Calatrava and The Museum that Flies

June 02, 2022

I began to run. I imagined I was a combined Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams from Chariots of Fire “Chariots of Fire”. I wasn’t serving or chasing God in any fashion. I just needed to run faster. I was in a race against the clock. My head flailed, and my hair flapped from side to side. My legs felt like they were hurdling Maya Lin “Wavefields”. The summer heat, the sweat, every pore of my body was working overtime. I leapt one more time and stopped. My lungs were protesting. My heart pronounced “finished”. I was processing that I had arrived. I let go of two fifty pound camera bags to the ground.

Was previsualization to become a reality? I ran to the museum entrance. The sign said “closed”.

I saw my reflection. “Lamentable”. I looked like Mark Twains’ “jackass rabbit”; “… three feet long, has legs like a counting-house stool, ears of monstrous length, and no tail to speak of. It is swifter than a greyhound, and as meek and harmless as an infant”. { Mark Twain, “Roughing It”}

2003 was my “jackass rabbit” year. I covered more than fifty thousand miles without exhaling. Today I had just completed photographing a couple of projects in Chicago. The summer in one of my favorite American cities can be painfully hot. With every step I felt the need to shield my head and eyes from a sun I couldn’t see. I ducked into the shadows. I stepped into air conditioned spaces along Michigan Avenue for a reprieve. The heat made the the gods laugh across the universe, “we are going to fry another one”.

Burning and sweating I began to reconsider my options for the rest of the afternoon. Option One: I could have a couple of martini’s and explore the city at night. Options two: speed up to Milwaukee for a dream assignment: Capturing Santiago Calatrava’s Milwaukee Museum of Art take off like a bird across Lake Michigan at sunset. I mistakenly hopped on to I-94W at rush hour. The two hour drive turned into four hours. I pounded the steering wheel. Air conditioning blasting, windows down, heart afire.

I arrived too late for a twilight shoot. My museum had its wings and beak tucked away for the evening atop the lake. I stood in place for quite sometime. I imagined I was a rookie baseball player arriving to the “SHOW”: (To get called up by an MLB team, you need to be the highest-rated player at your position). I made a quiet pirouette. It allowed me to take in the magnificence that will be a glimpse into tomorrow’s future. I need not be reminded that every time I make a photograph, I am blessed. I hardly remember what boys and girls dream about. Sports, photography and life come to mind.

I checked into my hotel. I had my last meal before my performance. I sat in the window looking down the hill towards my tomorrow’s moment and sipped a few cold drinks. I felt like one of those summer “Magnum” photographs of New York summer tenement images; sweltering heat pervading every breath. I scanned the immediate Milwaukee signage; Harley Davidson, Pabst Blue Ribbon and more.

My motivation today for tomorrow was enlivening the reason I became a photographer; something was out there that needed a “snap”. It ain’t like hunting the wilds of Africa or…But I do like knowing that the word “anxious” sits inside my head every moment I am a photographer.

Morning arrived. I grabbed one hundred pounds of tools and ran down the hill.

I set my position and mentally knelt in prayer. If the wind was beyond specified knots, the wings would not open. I was a one man wall preventing any tourists from stepping in front of my viewfinder. I heard a powerful “OH”. I turned and there were my wings rising. The great engineering

feat unfolded before my eyes. My camera had seconds before I could not hold off the massive group of people who wanted what I had…and then one hundred people poured past me.

My prize was inside my film.

I went home that day to New York. Days later I was fortunate to get past Santiago’s “Gatekeeper”.

We spent 3 hours talking about his work and my experiences photographing his working more of my journeys. He gave me a few treasured gifts. I left his home for mine. Years later he trusted me with a secret that I have kept for almost twenty years. His works have intertwined with my life as a photographer for most of my career as a photographer. In a way, Santiago Calatrava is to the twenty first century what Mark Twain thought Baseball was to the nineteenth century:

“Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century.” -Mark Twain

Turkey on the Rise: The Cats of Istanbul and more...

May 16, 2022

The last night I played spin the bottle:

I remember leaving the party. I started to walk home like Jim Hutton in the movie Walk Don't Run (1966) -. By the the time I was a block away, my gait morphed into an Usain Bolt imitation. I was running through the dark streets as if a thousand shadows were chasing me. It is a neverending out of body experience to recollect the fears of a child… I was eleven.

When one is young it might be uncommon for a rich imagination to recall the Bible’s gentle mentoring about magical truths: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,…” It would be appropriate for young and old to consider while traveling the unknown.

Magical truths have lured me towards life’s possibilities in ways Monty Hall game show contestants dreamed what might be behind curtains One, Two, or Three?

Today while chasing more important magical truths hidden among the shadows, I realize my photography empowers me to walk alone with no fears, along thoroughfares and into darkened alleyways. Bits and pieces from that childhood remain.

Photography Visual Mentors:

I can sit in my apartment window everyday of my life as if my camera, soul and eyes have been transported into the Edward Hopper canvas: “Red Painting Woman on Bed Looking out the Window”. My body remains still. My eyes are like a hawks’ panning the horizon for something to eat for something that matters.

I can imagine making hundreds of photography books by merely shooting from my window overlooking a specific New York footprint. I would hardly need to move a few small measurements from my windows to capture a hawks’ meal with my eyes and camera in place.

“It doesn’t matter that the psychology of my photography or Hoppers’ psychology are not as one. But the nature of this youth evolving into a visual person and marrying the light and shadow living inside a Hopper, is scary. Yet it is the bedrock for what I need to be apart of my everyday.

As we landed in Istanbul I asked myself why I need to travel on to far away continents. An immediate answer might be the excitement one discovers when you land in a city married to its rich ancient architecture, and the architecture of the living and what may become.

I soon found myself stepping down from the unique enclave “Akaretler Row Houses”. I could almost smell the Bosphorus Strait as it posed almost like a periwinkle sand painting framed against the hills of Europe. I saw the Bosphorus Bridge to my right, the Sultanahmet Palace to my left and seemingly all the significance of Istanbul as I was descending tap dancing down an imaginary double helix stairway from antiquity into modernism. The twisting breezes stirred me as I stared across the “Straits” white caps. Europe and Asia were connected like ascending/descending landscapes. It was mysteriously exhilarating.

I felt a cinematic pull from John Ford’s and John Waynes “The Searchers. I felt a similar pull from David Lean’s and Peter O’Tooles “Lawrence of Arabia”. (I have used these films for prior visual support in my blogs). Each film has crucial narrative moments of tremendous expanses. The films have contributed to my raison d’etre as a photographer. They confirm for me that without going forward you are not traveling you are not discovering. They allow my sensibilities to share a wee bit of bipolar sense: Hopper painterly truths on one side, and heroic cinematic sequences on another.

For me to conquer Istanbul I would need all the visual mentoring I could conjure up.

As I met the Bosphorus I heard the chants from the Minarets all across Istanbul. It was one of the few times that the sounds passing through the skies pillowed my anxieties. I remember once in Samarkand, Uzbekistan the chants airing on whacko static speakers made my ears feel like they were being boxed by punctuated cacophony all day long. But today’s Islamic tranquility chanting begged for calm. I began to think about pictures.

My Istanbul expectations were high. For the weeks I was there I was bowled over by the exceptional. It seemed that all of the relics of Turkey’s ancient history appeared to be present in my mind and eyes. In a glance, all of Istanbul felt like one Grand Bazaar begging to be discovered. My camera found the contemporary and the ancient, the charm and the magnificent. But my lens seemed to rest on mosques and palaces and the trappings of hundreds and thousands of years before this day.

Ancient markets ancient prisons are the discovered luxuries of the adventurous mind. Rugs, and tapestries, were hidden in plain sight under every artifact overwhelmed by man made dust and dust accrued through the centuries. Your eyes move furtively through the Bazaar, furtively through the streets, furtively behind every window display, furtively under every stone you step upon. You want something you didn’t have before. You want a piece of someone’s past and your present. You know the game: You discover something in the present to show someone in the future about the past. You travel to see what others have, how others live, but you might really travel to discover something about yourself. The vault in your mind is waiting to be unlocked to lock something anew inside.

It just might be the “Hookah” talking.

Istanbul’s Colony of Cats:

Black Cat by Rainer Maria Rilke

“…She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen

into her, so that, like an audience,

she can look them over, menacing and sullen,

and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;

and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,

inside the golden amber of her eyeballs

suspended, like a prehistoric fly”.

On our last evening in Istanbul, we sat listening to film noir jazz in a stylish Turkish brasserie. We had a terrace view of a landscape and evening lights. After a bit, the owner brought us a couple of glasses of wine to compliment what we were already drinking. I invited him to join me and my wife for some wine.

We shared our dining and wine experiences with him. He said that we had an exceptional itinerary.

We told him our adventures had so many unexpected wine and culinary pleasures.

We raved about walking the streets and the pure pleasure of discovery.

Then we mentioned the cats. Cats live on every doorstep, windowsill, rooftops,and a host of unimaginable comfortable spots that clearly say, “Do Not Disturb”.

If George Orwell had visited Istanbul I might imagine a book title something revolutionary: “The Rise of the Cats”, “Humans Beware”, “The Rights of Felines”.

We chatted a bit about the history of cats among the ancients and in present day folklore.

We mentioned that from our dining table, we could see what looked like thousands of cats that seemed to call the park their home. We wondered what the residents of the homes along the park thought about the smells and noises. ( I personally love cats) but the pure quantity was astonishing.

The proprietor said, that the cats are almost like citizens. Nobody bothers them and they don’t bother anyone…”though”.

There used to be the town crier. He ranted and raved about the cats. He tried to get the cats removed from the park. He went to the government. When they would not help him, he took matters into his own hands. He carted away and tried to kill as many cats as possible.

When the local residents who lived along the park or used the park for activities got wind of this story, they were furious. One night they took matters into their own hands and ambushed the “town crier”. Most people suspect that retribution was in order. The man was never seen again. You might imagine what happened to him. The story had some frighteningly similarities to a number of historical troubling events. The owner swore the story was true.

Why do I mention this story? It seems like it might be analogous to an “ Aesop's Fables ” or “Watership Down “, ”Animal Farm “, or a dozen books by Gabriel García Márquez

The magical truths may be just outside our front door in the safety of what we know. It is likely that the unimaginable stories will occur while traveling afoot crossing new boundaries.

New Blog: Los Angeles is a Giant Gated Community that in Some Ways is Akin to JK Rowlings "Fantastic Beasts..." Meets Thomas Pynchons' "Inherent Vice

April 28, 2022

When I hear Alicia Keys Symphonized “New York, New York” I automatically replace New York with “LA LA”. And sing it. LA is really the city of dreams. It is where you go as if you are John Wayne and Ward Bond in “The Searchers”. You are on a journey for destiny. Thank you photographer Edward Curtis and Director John Ford.
One day my arms spread east and west, and my head rotated from to north and south. I needed to see and touch the ends of greater Los Angeles from Thousand Oaks to Riverside to Anaheim to the Santa Monica Ocean. The present history is about to vanish and I needed to touch it and live it. Sometimes I realize I am living too fast like a whirling dervish dressed in a blur of spiraling symmetrical pastel patterns. A photographer has to take a deep breath and merely snap. Not spin like a top.
One day I imagined standing hand in hand with Howard Hughes. Who else but history’s Hollywood icon would I want to be with? Where else would Hughes want to be other than at his 700 Romaine street Hollywood studio. The address is only a bit more than a hop skip and a jump from the center of the universe. There is a plaque in Franklin Canyon that marks the center of Los Angeles. The center of the universe for some is Los Angeles.
Late one morning I headed north from Romaine to the Formosa Cafe with HH. We gazed out over the city’s “Fantastic Beasts”: Los Angeles is a panoply of fantastic desirables roped together. It feels like the seams are coming apart in the worlds’ largest gated community. Cars sped by like cattle herds freed from fenced in pastures. I realized I had to get a move on, there was so much to see with very little time. My good fortune is that my photography agendas take me to every corner and all of the in between in Los Angeles.
In LA I see myself as a searcher: Japan Town for Frank Gehry, Venice for Greg Lynn, Culver City for Thom Mayne and Ed Ruscha, Downtown for Lita Albuquerque, Malibu for Lynn Foulkes, Sepulveda for Richard Meier’s Getty, Brentwood for Michael Crichton. I am really like a cast member in Ed Ruscha’s book “Every building on Sunset Blvd”. Racing through the city I always have Ruscha in mind. I would stop in the middle of the street for a snap of something I didn’t want to miss. I would hold my camera through the sun roof snapping at what I thought the camera could see. It is what a shutter-speed is for.
One day I remember taking a photography break in Echo Park. I was watching the birds and the boats in the pond. I had my feet up like Lewis Carroll sans Alice. In that momentary mind bending bucolic setting, I leaped up and said I am not here for rest and peace, I am here to race on jet skis across the city and capture, capture. So I raced to Richard Diebenkorn’s home in the Palisades, and raced to another portrait session and so much more snapping. Still I can hear the symphony of “Keys “LA”. It all makes sense. The spurts of flaming madness trying capture the city’s more than 500 square miles with all of its “Fantastic Beasts and destinations was driving me crazy.
In some way I was trying to emulate Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne’s weekend sojourns through the undiscovered realm known as Los Angeles. Their journey was to see what the city looked like. Mine was capturing what artists, architecture and streets and parks and memorials and all of the physical I could see.
I always feel as if I am running a steeplechase when I land in Los Angeles. Thinking back on all of the cities I have been to, I realize that is my Modus Operandi. I cannot settle for a mere portrait session. It is not enough to merely have my camera define the dream of architecture. I must walk further, I must drive further to capture what I need.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I just want to park my brain where I hear Keys sing “LA” and I move on from Howard Hughes to Thomas Pynchon and his “Inherent Vice” denizens and meet up with with Billy Bob Thornton’s Goliath and call it a day.

Something I Have Seen in Architecture

April 08, 2022

“I am the Empire at the end of the decadence.”

(Paul Verlaine)

Godzilla’s image is a reflexive reminder of things past. My photography reflects in the smallest way Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past”. It seems almost impossible to mention the future past without mentioning Proust. I saw Godzilla when I was four or five. That joy and horror stamped across my eyes remains a constant reminder of the visual impact that all creative efforts need.

Generations disappear, legacy’s impact remains.

The bible seems to play a small role in my collective archives. There is always a “beget”. Like babies airlifted by storks in Walt Disney animations, one architect begets another and as soon as you know tribes are founded.

Architects are sometimes like “birds of a feather…”. They are in constant motion, creating legacies and histories. Their present is a link to our past and to our future: they design the footprints for our lives. Their constant motion is an attempt to create different ways to accept and apply new spaces. It is almost like watching a new embryo grow in a Petri dish.

I have photographed hundreds of architects and thousands of examples of their works. But what is the most compelling, is that like embryos, the architects ideas and concepts start with their own personal “Oz”.

The United Nations and more…Oscar Niemeyer

Oscar Niemeyer in his Rio Studio… A most magnificent day

Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis 1958 Expo Philips Pavilion

The genius ideas of Corbusier, Mies Van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn and more are generational giants who hover over contemporary giants and who in turn share the past and like great mixologists creating patterns of change for the future.

Naïvely I have asked every living architect I have met: Who are your heroes, who are your mentors? Sheepish responses break the tensions between strangers, but something remains: The four names above are connected to almost every voice working today. It is just possible that there might be a few who hesitate to utter Oscar Niemeyer.

I have learned the architects yearn to meld their fresh ideas into intriguing concepts until yet again a new brood assumes the leadership. The embryo continues to produce new generations, children from our past become the mentors and the cycle continues.

The Aged Architect

I don’t know our built empire well enough to critique it. Sometimes I see work that fails to live up to what I embrace as greatness. Sometimes there are secrets to why an architect may fail to live up to his/her reputation. Maybe the work is hindered by money constraints and money overlords.

I remember a very famous architect breaking down and crying while relating a story about a patrons abuse. The architect knew he had something special. He knew this new design could become something to appreciate for quite sometime. The patron ridiculed and abused the architects character and design. The work became harnessed with restraints. The work never became the great ideal.

The powers that sometimes rule over the creative genius who sometimes resides in chaos can be demonic. The architect an aged giant became a child and teared up, he felt remorse for sharing the intimacy. But with all my heart I know the intimate share allows me to appreciate the visual experience in a new and evolved way. I can shift the share to my lens. The voices of all architects and architecture became motivational. I now see beyond the facade of the man or the work. And try and infuse my pictures with the layers of others.

Edward Hopper

I find myself feeling “Hopperesque” looking out at the world’s great game of architectural “Blitz Chess” filling the city’s footprint. When a commission or a great day for photography is not in my calendar, buildings old and new seem to dance in my sights. Tall ferocious structures, seem to reign. Old Lillian Gish like brownstones hold court while others decay. Somewhere tall sleek and new to town rises a thousand feet into the sky.

Architects are amazing creators. Every fete creates new challenges for the next new design. After awhile the conversation turns to the new theoretical children. Their legions begin to move up life’s ladder. From my vantage point It is exciting to observe. The personal and public narratives get a bit louder. Decades pass and new conversations arise, new embryos, and a new favorite child is born.

Herzog and de Meuron sit atop Anish Kapoor 56 Leonard Street NYC

The Growing Menagerie: The Shah of Iran's Physician's Son, The Impressive Lillian Hellman and the Lives of so Much More.

March 25, 2022

I remember a 1980’s commission to photograph the impresario and manager Dee Anthony. He was a modern Oz looming over dozens of performers (Grateful Dead, The Who, Peter Frampton…). The client he had in his fold that day was the entertainer from Australia Peter Allen.

His apartment collection of accolades that were plastered along his walls and ceiling was the best part of the session that afternoon. When I was finished, Dee suggested I go across the street to La Goulue. “Tell Jean Denoyer I sent you”.

The East 65th street La Goulue Restaurant was as trendy as trendy could be. On any afternoon between 3:00 and 5:00 You might see Jackie O, Catherine Deneuve, Joan Didion, Peter Frampton, Springsteen and a host of personalities from the townhouse set.

This first introduction for me had my eyes filled with stars. I suddenly felt like Bernard Malamud’s protagonist, Roy Hobbs. Roy stood admiring the field, dreaming and demanding to being the best the “Game” (Baseball) had ever seen. Surrounded by New York chic royalty, my camera in hand like Hobb’s baseball I thought I might be the next photographer…

Standing in the middle of the restaurant I began to dream a bit as I made like Baryshnikov in pointe shoes, spinning with a dream of destiny in mind. I quickly wiped away the fairy dust from my eyes. No Roy Hobbs here. All these years later, I realize that I am merely a good photographer who wouldn’t trade this impossible life for anything else.

Later that night on East 65th street and fifth ave. I was sitting in the library of the Shah of Iran’s physician’s son’s apartment.

I initially thought my evening could be a share about life with the Shah and Persian secrets.

The night was festive. My host noticed me swirling my ice sans scotch. He offered me a refill. He noticed I was staring at his library. “Are you pleased?”. That is sort of like asking a pig if he is pleased with his “sty”.

I was bug eyed over his walls of books about Hollywood. My host was ga ga over Hollywood.

A once very handsome man, he had stories about starlets, Orson Welles and more. A life/career in Hollywood was not to be had. The Persian hand back in Iran was mightier than the passion. It is not that he suffered, instead, homes in New York, London and more seemed to comfort his lost youthful dreams.

My host noticed that my eyes rested on Lillian Hellman’s “Pentimento”. I mentioned that it was Pentimento and later Gore Vidal’s Palimpsest that I wanted to marry in style to make my own book: Reflecting on a life lived, and the people that made life rewarding.

My host was so thrilled to hear Lillian was one of my favorites. Before I could begin sharing my enthusiasm, we were told to finish our drinks, because we had reservations at La Goulue. When I had told him I was introduced only that afternoon to the restaurant he looked at me as if we had been friends from another life.

Denoyer was very excited to see this group, and of course surprised to see me again.

The focus on Hellman was certainly a terrific dinner conversation. Hollywood and favorite personalities and movies also filled in the nights chat.

Later that night when all the guests began to leave, for some reason my host said, “I have a feeling one day you will have a menagerie of experiences to share. Your contribution to the evening was special. We will be friends for a lifetime”.

I never saw or heard from my host nor his guests again.

Today I might recall Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi. “Rumi” said “If you find all your roads and paths blocked, “He” will show you a secret way that no one knows”. Who knows, just maybe in hindsight that day and night experience might have been eerily prescient. Possibly part of an imaginary witches brew that set my destiny towards amassing my menagerie of dreams, people and experiences. Maybe that fortuitous evening was part of a larger plan. I have no god in my blood but just maybe “Rumi” in my heart.

When I walked home I began to dream about what it might be like to be photography’s Roy Hobbs. Youthful aspirations has a way of confusing dreams from reality.

Where do I see it all come together? Do I begin with Francis Bacon screaming on the phone where to meet him at the “F..kin bar. Maybe when the Surrealist Peter Blume peed in his pants from laughter when he heard me shrill in horror from the shock of lightning hitting so close to his studio. Maybe de Kooning greeting me like long lost friends. Maybe it was my Hockney and Tchaikovsky moment. Maybe the night I got stoned with Jean Michel Basquiat and shared a bottle of Russian Pepper infused Vodka with him. Maybe it was the novice in me believing I could drink five glasses of scotch by noon with the famed art critic Clement Greenberg. Maybe it was imagining photographing Philip Johnson naked posing for my camera. Maybe it was Oscar Niemeyer’s holding my hand down on the sheet of paper while while we made a drawing together. Maybe while standing in front of Louis Kahn’s Bangladesh National Parliament Building, or one thousand other pronounced moments when I realized my dreams of grand experiences can come true.

The maybe’s are legion and delicious to remember. They have allowed me to develop an empirical observation of the human condition and collect a menagerie of visual experiences that have supported a lifetime of dreams and recollections.

Louis Kahn’s National Parliament in Bangladesh

Revisiting Kyiv’s Babyn Yar

March 10, 2022

I stood atop the Babi Yar monument, alone.

I remember I had arrived at the Kyiv train station from Moscow during the spring of 1985. The early morning hours are never my favorite. My sleepless ride made my muscles feel like a bunch of listless pillows fading left and right.

I was there to make portraits of Ukrainian cultural elites. My handlers, a communist Russian and two Ukrainian associates met me at the station. Upon greeting me, they immediately said that they wanted to share a special moment with me before my portrait schedule began. Because I am Jewish they thought I might find this particular slight detour to be a treat. They wanted me to see Babi Yar.

I was curious. My mother’s father had told me about Babi Yar. He was born in the designated gray area “Beyond the Pale” (pale). He wanted me to visit to search for long lost relatives. He knew the geography and the time would not permit. But he yearned for the notion of his past if only to dream in the moment.

But in the moment at hand it was as if one saw Yo-Yo Ma naked on the stage with his cello. I would want to know why he was naked merely to get to the crux of the matter. I could always listen to his performances another time. I needed to see Babi Yar. I could then think about its significance in the aftermaths… It is not a perfect analogy, but the spectacle of the moment jolted me out of my morning slumber.

Our car arrived. The three suggested that I take the walk alone. I appeared from behind the trees tiptoeing above the blades of grass. I stepped up to the monument wondering if I might be trespassing. I was the only person within view. I began to realize that in that marriage of seconds the universe was revolving around me and then stilled.

The writer/poet Marianne Moore had once said that it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing, but you cannot stand in the middle of this. She was referring to the seas. I was clearly in the middle of something, maybe middle earth for all I knew. Before and after that very real moment, life and death’s “Two-Step Dance” has never haunted like it had atop the Babi Yar monument.

For too many seconds I felt as if my mind was locked inside one of the exhibition displays at the Musée Dupuytren Paris. I stood in place and felt the earth tremble under my feet. My immediate nightmare was to wonder how many souls were still alive. Am I traumatized today? Maybe. I don’t live inside a nightmare, a nightmare does not live inside of me. But a certain triggering brings me front and center. Even two to three shots of something strong does nothing but intensifies the waves of anxiety that are cornered somewhere in my cranial nerve networks.

In all of the years since 1985, it has been something like a nervous tick that comes and goes. When I read about the bombing at Babi Yar just the other day, I saw everything I never wanted to remember, and so it goes.

In the past when I recalled the stories of the Germans taking aim at their Jews and prisoners, I have tried to imagine the space between the rifles clicking before the silence. I thought their might be a horror, a frozen moment. How do you hear silence.

Just maybe an analogous image might be the 1820 attack on the 87 foot whaling ship, the Essex. When the 85 foot sperm whale breached at the hull of the ship, the survivors recalled the screams when the whales’ nearly 6 foot wide eye peered over the hull and then the silence. Nobody heard the whale come crashing down nor the mayhem that followed.

Days later I visited the Russian Orthodox Church in Kyiv to photograph the Easter services. The Patriarch greeted me before services began. He made me promise I would make very good pictures.

He was told I had quite an experience at Babyn Yar. “Maybe because you are unshaven, but it seems you have regained your color. I am glad you have had success here. We will drink some wine following the services and I would like to hear about all of your experiences in Kyiv”.

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.

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