The Architecture of Cities: Barcelona

May 18, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: Barcelona

The great artist Joan Miro bade me farewell. I was very young. I wasn’t quite sure how to think or act. I was saddened and exhilarated. I met and photographed one of the great artists of the 20th Century. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the experience turned out to be vital for my life and my career.

The moment spoke to my heart: I imagined I saw my electrolytes virtually projected dancing along the skyline. The surreal glow could only mean one thing: I was alive: Life changed on a dime. My dreams were becoming my reality. I was on my way to witness the history of nations. I was living in the history of our times.

I was desperately sad when I left the island of Mallorca that day, but I would discover new adventures ahead: and many days in Spain.

I recently lectured at the IAAC/Barcelona: A humbling and fascinating architecture institute.

I began my lecture by revisiting the significance of my session with Miro and earliest days in Spain. For a nano second while talking about my previous visits, I felt like the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca upon his visit to New York: He was delightfully and frightfully overwhelmed by the moment and experience. He came away with a disdain for New York. I was delightfully and frightfully overwhelmed by my Barcelona moment. But I realized something wonderful was happening to me: every new experience equals living the dream.

There is something hallucinogenic in the Barcelona air. I remember standing at the end of the Blvd Saló de Saint Joan, where the Arc de Triomf resides. My feet felt like dancing. At first I was conjuring up my Fred Astaire style. But hey, I am in Spain. Instead the ghost of the great Barcelona Flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya arms extended, fingers alluringly motioning me into the streets. The sounds of the Flamenco quivered through the sky and clouds. Let’s dream a bit more. Why not? Why else does one travel but to realize dreams.

The city streets were mine. I collected a throng of companions to dance and prance in and around Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia and throughout El Born. For a fast second I was Cervante’s Quixote emboldened, enriched, and unleashed.

detail from #ELBORN neighborhood from Julie Wark’s window

When I travel. I try to conquer cities. I am blessed and cursed with the need to capture the streets and architecture of a city in a feverish pitch. My pupils dilate. I cross thousands of intersections. My mission is on steroids.

In this moment I needed to discover the visual treasures of Barcelona. I reach out and try to grab the aura of buildings: Of course there was the scene stealing bravado of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia outside my bedroom window. My eyes were entertained. And so it begins.

I realized I had work to do. The pleasures of architectural design waits for no person. But for me on this particular Barcelona visit, design achievement stood at attention seemingly with every blink of my eyes: The architectural accomplishments of Jean Nouvel, Richard Meier, Frank Gehry, Santiago Calatrava, Sir Norman Foster and of course the Catalans’ Bofill and Guallart were waiting.

detail from along the waterfront Barcelona

Every city holds secrets that are not meant to be seen, but discovered as if one was an explorer. So much stimuli overload, is life threatening, but the greatest sensation I know of. The eyes might need a rest, but time is not on my side.

I cannot possibly describe what happens to me when cities hold visual secrets that I know have to be captured by my lens. While in Barcelona my mind remembered similar experiences about Dubai, Miami, Tokyo, and more.

Sometimes when I target a city’s architecture I become so feverishly out of breath I feel like I am a patient in “…Cuckoo’s Nest”. I try to make sense of a world that takes a lifetime to understand; Yet I march on.

I spent my last Barcelona hours at the home of the fabulous romantic architect Ricardo Bofill. The experience walking in and about La Fábricia and Walden 7 evoked a cascading reminiscing of every morsel of food, every posturing along the streets and every smile of satisfaction that I experienced not only on this particular engagement, but every memory that I have claimed over forty years.

The pleasurable calm that I met in Barcelona has been the revelatory moment that I have sought for a life time in photography.

Detail of #RicardoBofill #LaFabricia home

Before There Were Women

May 04, 2023

Before There Were Women

To take a primer course in women in culture, one merely needs to start with the Greek (three Fates) Moirai: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. In a way we are who we are because of the Moirai. In a way the Moirai in effect granted our existence. Though I always liked Odysseus’ wife Penelope: She put up with quite a bit until she succumbed. We did need Odysseus to have a reason to return home.

So much of where we come from whether it be myth or historical fact starts with women.

It sounds like something obviously worth celebrating.

When I was young I certainly considered living like a thousand Greek Gods. There are probably a thousand Greek Goddesses as well that I have knowingly or inadvertently taken direction from.

But my most impressionable years whether it was about worshipping gallant men or formidable women began with Warner Brothers, MGM and RKO. There might even be a couple million pages from known literature that rounded out and informed my life.

The women I have known

I discovered women on television: Movies and serial television. Admittedly books came later. Not much later, but since cinema has influenced just about every emotion and thought I have ever tangled with, where better to begin: Lillian Gish in Night of the Hunter.

Is it possible that there are just merely two scenes in Night of the Hunter that have influenced the way I make photographs more than any other film. Is it possible that every time I measure what might be necessary to execute a successful photograph I conjure the best Black and White cinematography I have ever seen. Though I am a color photographer, and I gasp when I see a particular frame from the original Blade Runner: there is little or none that compares to my Lillian Gish, Robert Mitchum film.

Lillian Gish’s role as protectorate of the children from Robert Mitchum’s “Love and Hate” hands, still makes my hair stand straight up. The feisty Gish with a rifle speaks volumes about a woman who defends and is defiant in the moment. Maybe Barbara Stanwyck, equals Gish’s tenacity in tv’s The Big Valley. Yet still there are probably hundreds if not millions of roles that pointed to empowerment.

I was raised on Charles Laughton’s Gish. The visual influence is my reward.

I remember myself as a coming of age professional photographer when I discovered among some remarkable women: grit, empowerment and vulnerability. These words were not in my visual vocabulary early on. Some very famous artists; Lee Krasner, Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgeoise, Alice Neel, Isabel Bishop, Helen Frankenthaler and countless others awakened photography sensibilities that I had not met yet.

Portrait Photography can be a bit like therapy and intimidate certain subjects. The only way to deal with it is through nervous chatter. Nervous chatter calms with time. The more time with the subjects the more at ease it may be to expose yourself. By expose, I certainly do not mean lifting up your nightgown like Alice Neel did for me one afternoon. I mean to let the camera in. To speak to the lens with a naked mind: clear and comfortable in one’s own skin and ready to share.

Each of the above mentioned artists greeted me with suspicious minds. They were aware that I had photographed some very famous male artists. To a person, they asked me if I came to them because I needed some female filler in my archives, or was I truly interested in their work.

It became like a star studded sparring match. Dukes were up, questions flew at me left and right.

I was ill prepared for the onslaught. I must have fought back with deserving answers. Though it took about thirty minutes each, the coffee and cakes or even shots of whiskey became part of the shooting environment.

The end of the sessions would bring one across the bow warning: Don’t mess up, and be sure that a successful picture lands in their hands.

That was then, and now hundreds of women as seen through my lens, live in my archives.

Half Century of American Art

April 27, 2023

New York City

I was part of the tapestry of the art world fantasia

One year among decades felt like the surf expression I am very fond of: “Step into Liquid”. More than three hundred days of a particular year I was immersed in photographing artists. Not just any artists: The second half of an American century. My life was a master class in Art History.

My mind felt like I was floating in a grittier version of Julie Taymor’s “Across the Universe”. I was not only photographing internationally famous artists and emerging artists: I was seeing performance art: naked people with erections slithering with naked chickens. If you were wired in there was just wild stuff. I felt like Play-Doh kneaded in unrelenting directions.

My body ran across avenues. I stormed into subway cars. I lunged head first into taxis. I was a modern Alfred Kazin (A Walker in the City) or E.B White (Here is New York). The main difference from the two writers, was that I had specified appointments with discovery. I was on my way to photographing hundreds of art world personalities. Everyday sometimes three times a day I would make a photograph in Soho, the Lower East Side, Upper East Side, Fulton’s Fish Market. North, South, East, West my foot long dogs (feet)were abused. Wherever art lived, I was there.

The days and nights were filled with the unexpected: I could never expect Larry Rivers to excuse himself so he could have quick sex with a heated groupie. I didn’t know what to say to James Rosenquist when he asked me not to publish my portrait of him with a whiskey bottle: Until he passed. I couldn’t imagine why Robert Rauschenberg poured me more than five shots of Jack Daniel’s at 10:00 in the morning: Have you ever hit the summertime sun straight on at Noon.

Can you imagine what it was like to be exposed to the underneath of Alice Neels’ nightgown.

Then there was the music: Artists’ studios were filled with the sounds of Opera, Symphonies, Jazz and every once in awhile the Sex Pistols or Talking Heads. Everyday felt like I was inside one of those snow globes: Everything was shaking and I was sitting in the center of the world.

Can you imagine the era when film was a photographer’s best companion. A time when a single frame wrestled with your patience. A time when a successful shoot with Isamu Noguchi, Raphael Soyer, Willem Dekooning, Roy Lichtenstein, David Salle, Peter Blume or a more famous or lesser famous artist was paused until the photo lab processed your film into transparencies or negatives?

What were you supposed to do while you waited and anxiously suffered until the lab technician said, “Schulman, your film is ready”.

Man, I had these lists about lists.

About these lists: Now I am writing about New York: but in that year almost one hundred dealers from London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles opened their private contact vaults for me!! Why, I will never know. Just about every important or up and coming gallery shared with me contacts of their rosters. The lists were my adrenalin elixirs: once in hand I was on the move.

I might walk out of a meeting with a gallery and immediately head for the “pay phones” on the streets. Sometimes when a voice picked up, I was sure I was in church or temple. Those moments might even feel like god fearing shaking Baptist gospel.

In hindsight, It may not be that the images mattered most. If an artist did not answer the phone call I would wait patiently(mostly anxiety ridden) for days or weeks for a return call. It might have been midnight or early morning that I would receive a return call. I would be awakened to mellifluous and sometimes barking acerbic responses conversations with Jacob Lawrence, Dorothea Tanning, Marisol, Saul Steinberg and many more.

I heard aged voices that melted my heart, stirred my imagination. The voices were old, yet I knew they were the voices I passionately wanted to meet. Everyday I was turning to a new page, I was in heaven.

New York City at the time was like a world history class for me. I felt like a New York version of David Bowies’ “The Man who Fell to Earth” landing in character in Mel Brooks “History of the World Part 1”. Everything was new and foreign to me. Everyone was from somewhere. I was traveling through cultures and time. I was home, I just didn’t know it yet.

For years I wondered what my past had meant to me. Then one day I was shooting the portrait of the artist Alberto Burri. The room suddenly became whispering quiet. I turned around and there stood Isamu Noguchi. I did not know that Isamu and Alberto were great friends. Alberto walked quickly to grab hold of his old friend Isamu. Just before they hugged, Noguchi looked over at me and said, “you’re that photographer”.

The Life of Architecture: Georgia O’Keefe, Renzo Piano, Rem Koolhaas and Kengo Kuma

April 19, 2023

The Life of Architecture: Georgia O’Keefe, Renzo Piano, Rem Koolhaas and Kengo Kuma

Georgia O’Keefe’s whispering fragility could shake the red clay off the New Mexican Jemez mountains. Her indomitable spirit, strength and courage was from another galaxy. So when I heard her say: “I tried to paint what I saw. I thought someone could tell me how to paint landscape. But I never found that person. I had to just settle down and try. I thought someone could tell me how, but, I found nobody could. They could tell you how they paint their landscape, but they couldn’t tell me to paint mine. The cliffs over there, you look at it and it is almost painted for you, you think, until you try.” https://www.instagram.com/reel/CqjkONxDsqT/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=

I found a truth for my own life’s work.

I am a self taught photographer. I have never understood what I do. I have merely understood why I do it. My mind and body have traveled across continents to photograph architecture. It seems like a simple gesture, a simple act to make the photograph at hand, “…until you try”.

When I make photographs I try not to be swayed by outside influences. I try. I would prefer to be thrown into the fire, and surprise myself with what may be. How thoroughly exhilarating that sounds.

It was like that afternoon I photographed Alfred Stieglitz’s Lake George home: The summer air ruled. The rural vacancy of a breathing life prevailed. I stood alone with a single frame. (If you allow for a suspension of disbelief) I imagined hearing the lovers Ms. Georgia O’Keefe and Mr. Alfred Stieglitz whisper, “you have to tangle with two hundred and fifty years of photography”. I had to make it mine!

Episodes

Renzo Piano’s Hermes in Tokyo: The building is an untamed elegant multi faceted colossus. The crafted gem that became Hermes, is also a gift from the maestro Renzo Piano.

Every day and night for one week I returned to the Hermes building. I had to be like a gemologist to recognize all of the crafted facets. My mind imagined so many ways to compose the photograph. I needed to pretend the building is like a giant Rubik’s cube. I twisted and turned my camera until it realized the appropriate pose that needed to be shot. I still was not satisfied with my Piano’s Hermes.

I would leave the building to focus on other things.

I had the luxury and the good fortune to photograph the portraits and architecture of SANAA, Ito, Isozaki, Ban and Ando. Around the city I would travel daily for these and other visual experiences. Certainly I cannot downplay the rewards of conversing with such unique and towering architectural giants. It was the most informal graduate course on architecture I had experienced: One week of formidable exchanges.

Everyday I was switching train lines or hopping into taxis. Everyday I was trying to solve the Piano’ Hermes riddle. On my last day in Tokyo I saw an incredible impressionable photography exhibition of Samurai in the courts of England and France. It led me to come to terms on a number of photography issues. Later that morning I stopped thinking about photography’s history and my obligation to the centuries of the form/art. I raced over to the Ginza.

I realized my photography was not meant to be anything less than a share of a total experience.

I made my morning picture. I made my evening picture. “Gotcha”

I have heard that Rem Koolhaas is a great teacher. In architecture I think that may be one of the great compliments.

I arrived in Rotterdam to shoot Rem’s portrait and one of his buildings for my book; “Portraits of the New Architecture”. It was an odd day to say the least. A dozen misunderstandings regarding the portrait session. Putting aside the misunderstanding, Rem was a prince. He gave me all of the time I needed: I shot the image in about thirty minutes. He was gracious to the end: thanking me for flying all the way from New York. Everyone was happy. He also found the humor in the fact that I was staying in the Hotel New York, in Rotterdam.

I was a bit “under the gun”. Shooting a portrait and a building in one day taxed my brain quite a bit.

But under the gun, in the line of fire or any phrase that lives up to, do what you gotta do, is a winner for me.

It is always the moment that you see your appointed building for the first time that makes your hair on your arms stand at attention. I was alone on the local trolley. My trolley was slowing for a stop across the road. It allowed me to scope out my prey as I crossed the street. It wasn’t quite like the Pequod’s Captain Ahab calling out, “…Moby Dick is mine!” There the was the Kunsthal building! This is years before his De Rotterdam (that I have also photographed.)

I am not a critic. I cannot allow my camera to make a critique. I just had to make the image mine.

I had asked Rem Koolhaas for any thoughts about what was necessary to look for. He simply gave me the answer I was looking for; You are the photographer, it is your photograph.

With the April sun allowing me for just a few more hours to make something happen. I swiftly danced from north to south, west to east side of the building. I ran inside stepping on every square foot of a Koolhaas. It was a playground for my photography that reaped rewards every step of the way

Kengo Kuma gave me a great assignment.

In a past blog I have mentioned shooting for Kengo Kuma in Yusuhara, Japan.

My initial commission was for a few buildings in Tokyo. He added an additional trip to Yusuhara.

Yusuhara Is almost like a forgotten world. Yet it is a place that one can entertain their Zen and just come away with a complete reorientation of priorities and purpose.

The commission was to photograph maybe six structures: Hotel, Spa, Library, House of Prayer, a bridge and…

I attempted discover new ways of shooting Kuma’s. The bridge disrupted my photographic agenda the most. It is such an easy thing to photograph. But I mostly felt hypnotized by its beauty every time I lifted my camera to snap.There was that romantic zen that had me dreaming of narratives. The narratives were adventurous novellas taking place in worlds I had never known. Yet every time I looked up at the bridge fantastic visions would enliven my mind.

I remember riding the bus through the lush countryside from Yusuhara to Osaka. The embracing verdant forests allowed me to travel again and again across the fantasy bridge of stories.

Memories and Memoirs

April 12, 2023

Memories and Memoirs

Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Arts Center Columbus, Ohio

{Eisenman, Gehry, Tsien, Williams and Marks}

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”

(Nabokov)

I didn’t know who I wanted to be, but I knew I had to get there to know what that was.

RLS

The great Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov wrote “Speak,Memory”. Nabokov was like a Sorcerer the way he could lay down words from memory. I wish my memory was as acute as is, or like the magician Harry Lorayne (a man who remembered everything).

Vladimir Nabokov would think collectively. He sometimes seemed to float like from a Chagall painting above a single word. The word would later find itself splayed out on a white typing sheet. The word would later graduate into the world and the Nabokov canon.

Occasionally he would step down from his lofty perspective and joins us. We were not aware of his presence until we read his stories or memoirs and realize he has always been among us: He knows us.

I wanted to be like Nabokov. He was not fierce or Rabelaisan. He was in the wind with butterflies. Where flitting butterflies landed, Nabokov discovered nature’s bounty; or so his memoirs suggest in great detail.

When he wrote about Chess as in “The Defense”, he wrote about man’s fragile vulnerability: The character may crash and burn: He was still writing about us.

I of course have led quite a different life. I think a scatter gun best suits my approach to life and career. Cervantes might have thought I was too Quixote. Rabelais might have thought I was too Gargantuan. I think I was intended to embrace collectively one million Birds of Paradise and ask myself what have I accomplished: Have I done enough.

I have had incidental wanderings upon one million Monarchs. Nabokov’s wanderings were with specific calculations. He would spread his eyes across the planet as a distilled yet calculated life observer. His eyes smiled as they danced among his prized genera of butterflies.

I know we are completely different beasts; Yin and Yang. Nabokov lived a fully articulated life among letters. I love the order in his life. I am still chasing my endgame: Instead of amassing a library of letters, I am looking at an archive of photographic images. Do I have an endgame? What will it matter.

Chasing Shadows: Breathless

Chasing shadows is part of a holistic approach that just might allow me to realize my endgame. If I follow my visual instincts, maybe all of my concerns will come into focus: I think when I consider the decades, the most consistent factor in all of my images is the presence of shadows.

I have composed images with a bit of an excited yelp! The yelp arises when I see a shadow. No ordinary shadow, but one that says, “Stop now and shoot”.

The architect Peter Eisenman’s magnum opus may just be “The Wexner Center for the Arts”.

Columbus, Ohio is home to some fabulous architecture. But I was racing almost breathlessly to see if I could capture the Eisenman genius.

Ohio and Columbus are such a profound example of Middle America. Outstanding visuals across the state. I felt I had slipped into another time another part of history. A Columbus General Store had me feeling that Rod Serling was directing a live episode of Richard Schulman in shock. I had missed the photograph of the century: Adjoining the General Store was an ice cream shop. Two very round and robust Ohioans in pastel Easter colors were licking equally pastel Easter colored ice cream cones. Needless to say it is not fair to go on with the description of an image that I missed snapping: Alas, only in Ohio.

There is no past in Ohio. Every century, and every decade seem not to have been phased by time. But then there is Eisenman.

Driving like a maniac to catch the light I have not seen. Driving like a maniac to see what may be the greatness of a single man. Doing my due diligence to see what I needed to see in this magnum opus.

As my car swung through the campus of Ohio State I espied what my whole career had been shaped by; The shadow. There it was. Before I could encircle my objective. I stepped into my mark for Wexner’s closeup. It was just this one soft shadow that made what might be seen as a deconstructive image into a bucolic “aha” setting.

I knew instantly that my quest had been realized. Even after walking in and around the building for the next few hours, I continued to remind myself of the “shadow”.

Hey, maybe there is a better picture, but for what I dream about, I was in love.

Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall was designed before Bilbao. Somehow, today Disney is sort of the “Mini Me” to Bilbao. Disney is a treasure. Many years before the movie “Ford Vs.Ferrari movie I felt like I was breaking Craig Breedlove’s land record everyday. I raced from the west side to the east side everyday for one week through the streets of Los Angeles. I needed to capture at least one or two Disney/Gehry photographs. My father raced against Dan Gurney and Ken Miles and…I kind of know what racing with assurance is about. I always raced the engine like I was “Breathless” Belmondo style..

I think I maybe recorded 2-3 successful images. I worked like a dog. I always work like a dog while taking pictures. So when I saw Frank’s Disney the way he just might like it: I saw a certain curtain dressing of shadows that made me quietly yelp, “aha”. There ain’t nothing like it.

Billie Tsien and Tod Williams are remarkable architects. If I was Vladimir Nabokov today, I would confess that on the day I made their portrait, they were my Nabokov butterflies. I chased them around the American Folk Art Museum on the day of the opening.

Their minds had to be racing breathlessly with a check list stamped on their foreheads. It just had to be that way. I merely waited until like a butterfly netted they had no more room to run.. They stopped. I shot.

My light and my camera allotted me five more images. But it was this single image that became my moment; Joy in my heart; hard won perspiration springing from my eyes. If one could yell “That’s it” but one doesn’t.

Almost twenty years later, I still feel a little bit of heaven from that moment. For me there is nothing like chasing a shadow that before that day had not existed. For days and weeks following I laid in the middle of the street waiting for the museum to be captured in a similar light. I was unleashed with ambition and heart. My reward was Tsien/Williams portrait of two architects and a portrait of their work. The total experience was like my “My Trip to Bountiful”.

The Art Dealer Matthew Marks was quite insistent that he did not want to be photographed. But a few phone calls and a bit of “please” I captured a whirlybird that had no interest in a whirl.

Matthew is a wonderfully imposing figure. My camera seemed to see things I had not seen yet. There were colors and shadows wafting slowly in the gallery space. It almost reminded me of the beautiful staggering struggles that Jane Fonda and Michael Sarrazin endured in the final scenes from “They Shoot Horses Don’t They”.

Matthew Marks clearly was not engaged. I needed to motivate him. The real and mirage like colors and shadows suddenly compelled me to act like a fashion photographer: “Beautiful baby, just beautiful”.

If I had not encased Matthew in the two trademarks that are Richard Schulman: Colors and shadows, I am not sure what I would have done. Matthew might have killed me. But walking out of the upper East Side gallery I knew that for me, no matter how much I confound myself with Nabokov’s life versus mine, a single tip of my shutter, makes me sing. Maybe (“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”) is more about my photography Than I realized.

Keanu Reeves and Isabella Rossellini Eating FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD

April 06, 2023

Keanu Reeves and Isabella Rossellini Eating FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD

In the memoirs by General Douglas MacArthur and General (Colonel at the time) George Patton, both men recounted their meeting during the France St Mihiel offensive in 1918.

What they remembered diverged significantly.

Time significantly alters the facts unbeknownst to the raconteur. I try to remember a significant detail that alludes to the idiom: ”The Devil is in the details”; Which comes from”God is in the details”.

I remember sitting in the bar area of the Beverly Hills Hotel Polo Lounge. I was waiting to be called up to Gore Vidal’s room. I was anxious. I was plotting. I was levitating. The Gore portrait was a dream come true.

But I was distracted as I sat at the bar. The person next to me was eating a salad. It is not fair to judge other people. It is not appropriate to judge other people. So I will only say that in my life I have never seen anyone eat quite like Keanu Reeves.

I was standing by a bar in a very popular upper east side Manhattan Italian restaurant. I was meeting a couple of friends. I glanced over towards a woman eating some pasta. To this day, I have never seen anyone eat pasta quite like Isabella Rossellini.

Food is a glorious companion. Food connects people. Food is a bridge between adversaries. Food offers a common denominator among strangers.

One only needs to think: “Babette’s Feast” and “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover”.

Story lines can best be remembered if one can remember what was served for a meal.

Frank Gehry has always reminded me of a cute Marmot. He is lovable to look at. He is extremely smart and talented. He is opinionated.

I was having a quick bite with Frank, Stanley Tigerman and Greg Lynn. The hotel cafe in New Haven was not so special. The three were eating sandwiches. It had a Last Supper atmosphere. I rolled out a photographic print I was very proud of: Eero Saarinen’s Ingalls Rink. Before I could explain the image, and the story that included Greg Lynn, Frank shook his head negatively. Stanley looked away. The Marmot had spoken. This endearing cuddly and famous architect gave it a thumbs down.

I sat down to join them for a bite.

Later that early evening, I sat with Frank on the train from New Haven to Manhattan. I showed him pictures that I had made for a book. His eyes were glued to the two images of Disney Hall. “These are great, how come I have not seen them before? He turned right into my eyes and the cuddly Marmot whispered, “I loved the Saarinen”. More on that story for another time.

I arrived in São Paulo:

Paulo Mendes da Rocha was impatiently waiting for me. When I arrived for our shoot with my assistant, he was beside himself. “I only have a few minutes” he waved angrily. I thought he was nuts and unruly.

We talked about his recent award: The Pritzker Prize. He began to loosen up and apologized for his blunt introduction.

After an hour he asked us if we were hungry. He took us to a local favorite spot and we had an early dinner. Three hours or so later he said; “Tomorrow I will show you my city”.

The dinner had softened his heart. The conversation about him had helped a bit. But the next day we were best pals and the tour took us to unique sites of the city which also include five or six of his buildings.

It just might have been the dinner the night before that have reduced him from Rabelais’s Gargantua to Dickens’ Tiny Tim.

The endearing Brazilian was in the end everything I had hoped for. I guess I am sometimes right: it starts with food.

Richard Meier is a unique personality. I have photographed Richard more than any one person.

From 1988 until 2009 maybe seven times.

It was the last time that he revealed his most natural self. It is a portrait that I promised him not to show until, well you know, until after the very end.

We sat at a table on the grounds of his East Hampton Estate. He was dressed in… His face wore a …His tee-shirt was…

He kicked back against a tree. We talked about… Nothing was off limits… I merely had to share this story when he was no longer here…

The end of the afternoon came. He walked me to his driveway. He paused before we got to his Porsche. He asked me to wait a minute. He trotted back with an armful of fruits and vegetables from his garden. “This is special”. I know he meant that he picked it fresh from his garden. From a tough New York architect, a successful man of the city, he wanted me to know how big his heart can be.

Tough as nails, I have not seen him since.

Have I ever told you about Reuben Nakian’s Meatloaf Sandwich? Have I ever told you about lunching with Henry Moore while gazing at sheep and sculpture. Have I ever told you about lunch with the French artist Cesar at Le Dome? Have I ever told you about lunch with Calatrava at his Park Avenue home. Do you remember me sharing my afternoon with the television producer Douglas Cramer? Can an afternoon lunch in Southampton with Roy Lichtenstein be any more “Pop”. Is there anything more delectable than sharing an American cheese and mayo sandwich with Larry Rivers?

Was there any afternoon more frozen in time than eating at a French Cafe in Montreal with Phyllis Lambert?

Over the decades of photography what I remember most is sitting across from a person of interest who believed as I do as did the films of “Babette’s Feast and “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover”, everything good happens around food.

Thinking Out Loud. Roxy Music and More

March 30, 2023

I remember sitting alone in a Parisian cafe. I played on the “Jukebox” the song “Avalon” a thousand times.

I was sitting by the window. I was looking on to busy Montmartre streets. I was both a tourist and a photographer. It depended on the day. The day that nobody rang me up, I was a tourist. The day the phone rang I flew to one arrondissement and then another. It is pretty much what happens to me in most cities.

I like to eat. I like to be somewhere where I can grab something delicious quickly. I am not going to list all of the cities; New York, Paris, Barcelona and Istanbul are at the forefront.

When I recently listened to Roxy’s “Manifesto” song, my life with a camera made some sense;

“I am for a life around the corner

That takes you by surprise

That comes leaves all you need

And more besides.”

My life with my camera needs not only meaning, but it has to be about an experience that instructs me, builds me and it is something I can share visually or through conversation. A life without experiences is not a life.

The experience I used to have when I made portraits was that some pretty unique characters shared some pretty intimate feeling and experiences.

I mostly felt like I was a psychiatrist with patients asking for guidance. Though there were times that some subjects couldn’t wait to bubble over with stories about their inner sanctum.

It was a privilege that I have cherished for decades.

The experience photographing architecture and design makes me feel like I am an astronaut

floating in space staring at the planet earth and thinking about the way it looks to my eyes.

There are only the sounds of space(whatever that may be) whispering galaxy stuff.

When I stand in front of a building or an object, there is only me and the whispers that my space may or may not have.

I have photographed an astronaut. He was the one who told me what it feels like to see earth from above and hear nothing. He joked that martians may have said hello

But he did whisper that to me. He figured NASA might be listening and he did want to come across as “bonkers”. When I am alone with a building I could never reveal what is exactly going on in my head: I have to maintain some sense of sanity, as joyfully difficult that might be.

I am sharing today some pieces from my travels to cities. Of course I wont share what I was thinking

ButI hope you enjoy the experience.

Reflection through Rafael Vinoly Building 277 fifth Avenue

Old Friends

March 23, 2023

I remember seeing seven red naked whales swimming atop the waves of the yellow ocean.

I stood on the shore like a squinting eel. I just wanted to know where has all of the the time gone.

Raymond Pettibon; Decades ago: Los Angeles

“Old friends” are something my camera has seen. When friends pass, I meet them again as memories.

My first collection of artists, I seemed to catch just before they died. By comparison my second collection of artists seemed to be captured just after they were born: I get them coming and going.

When I photographed Raymond Pettibon for the second time his trust in my process was undeniable. Raymond lived in a ranch house styled home and at first painted small canvases.

By the time this session occurred he had graduated to large wall paintings.

He threw, I threw paint in every direction on a plexiglass canvas. Raymond is a big guy. I am a big guy, but Raymond has an indomitable spirit. He would be Sisyphus, except he has the conquering drive. No boulder would stop his energy to get the work done.

When He completed the painting he was depleted. I don’t think he returned to his home immediately. I think he stepped outside the studio and raised his arms to bring in the new oxygen. Then maybe home, or another canvas. He is a big guy

Richard Tuttle is part of my middle age artist collection. Maybe at the time he was mid career.

There are hundreds or thousands of artists who are certainly seen by radar, but their level of growth hasn’t been measured yet. He sat on the teeter-totter for awhile. Obviously I am writing this looking through the rear view mirror. Shortly after I photographed him he was suddenly in museums around the planet.

Our session was in a scratchy looking studio. There was no place to sit without a bit of inspection necessary.

Richard likes the quiet whispers. I had recently returned from photographing Man Ray’s wife Juliett.

He whispered with passion that he wanted to know about everything I saw. Maybe he was a quiet Man Ray enthusiast, maybe he just liked whispering.

I loved our session because I loved making my portrait of him. I loved our session because he had this calming affect on me. I was so relaxed that time passed so quickly that the portrait that I enjoyed taking so much happened in minutes. But I think it worked because there wasn’t an expression that he was afraid to share.

When I left, I wasn’t sure what had just happened. But as I walked from his avenue back to my avenue, I think we might have settled on world peace. Whispers are not always so clear.

Jim Dine is one of a fascinating collection of portraits. I think there might be one dozen artists who I photographed 2-3 times.

Jim is 87 now. When I first photographed him he was 47. I thought he was old then. But objectively, he just had an old soul. I was told just before the first session that he was one of the meanest artists around. But certainly that was misguided information. Jim might have been the nicest and most understanding patient artist out of the hundreds who have sat for me.

The first session was in London, but the next two sessions were in NYC.

By the time this session that you see (I think it was for a French art magazine) we had seen each other about town. He was prepared for the pain that he swore up and down about: “Those lights Richard are burning a whole through me”. Of course I confirmed to him that the lights are a bit hot.

I told him to think of it as a doctor’s appointment. A blood test or a vaccination and the doctor says, “look the other way, it will only hurt for a minute”. I reminded him of the time my lights set my own hair on fire. I let him know that I will suffer with him for every second the session takes.

When I was finished, he recounted the three sessions. He said, “we are done!”.

Of course I knew what he meant: Three portraits over 15 years was good for me too.

All of the above artists are equally a happy and sad reminder of time passing. The sad part is that there will be a final breath and they will be gone. The happy part is a selfish one: I just loved shooting these amazing talents as part what in hindsight was my Triassic Age.

A Conversation With Myself: An Urban Safari

March 16, 2023

Silvetti and Machado: One Western Avenue at Harvard University

The life of a photographer in architecture is equal to a safari, an urban safari.

The imaginary landscape comes into focus. For a few minutes or a day I am Clark Gable in Mogambo.

It is not the acting or the cinematography that lures me to the screen. It is the sounds of the urban wilderness that alerts my eyes to the limitless unknown: The crackling sounds of man or animal in the midst, the howls of man or animal in the distance. My riveted but vulnerable imagination explodes. The sounds draw me to what I might see, what I need to see. I am on the hunt for an assigned agenda. But I am also hunting for the unexpected.

Imagination is my tool. I use it to explore. I use my imagination to make something more than what exists: something real and new. I explore the possibilities of photography in life and in architecture.

The most profound awakening: Photographing architecture is a brew of the loneliest and most exhilarating moments.

When you make a portrait there is a game that is played. It is fun and rewarding.

When you visit museums there is another game at hand: The viewers engagement in the dialogue between generations of art and artists: That is a great game as well.

But architectural photography is about the quiet luminescence of space. It is about the adventures of an “URBAN SAFARI”: It is a quest to reveal the secrets of history; The secrets of architecture.

Imagine reclining in a toddler’s bedroom: Ceiling mobiles and lights depict the stars of the universe.

Imagine reclining in a planetarium: The galaxies’ stars seemingly perform for our eyes.

Imagine the quiet of sound, the vastness of space, the notion of being alone.

Then there is a whisper. It is a whisper that I alone can hear. Because it is my dialogue with myself. The absurdity and the frightening notion that not another sound can be heard, but my own imagination tangling with the vastness of space and the reality of what my photograph may be?

This is how I stand before a building; This is how I set out to discover architecture.

I set out to see Silvetti and Machado’s One Western Avenue at Harvard University. It was an early Urban Safari for me. All I had was an address. All I knew was that I was about to see the spectacular. I was hoping, because there are no certainties.

It was something the architects chose for me to photograph for my book. I arrived. I stood alone. Minutes seemed like hours. What was I to make of this “catwalk”, this bridge. I had nobody to talk to: And so I composed.

A few weeks later I was on a train from London to Manchester. Daniel Libeskind’s the “Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, England awaited.

The train felt a bit like the puttering boat that Bogart and Hepburn road in The African Queen: It was a pleasure to feel the winds in my hair. What would I find? Something spectacular? Or something less than the hype?

The museum sits alone across a bridge from the train station. My english is good, but it “ain’t” Manchester English. I walked alone with few to talk to. A pub and a beer relaxed me a bit. Maybe a fantastic moment was near?

Alone in a foreign country or alone at a major university, I might as well be on a safari in Africa yet alone an Urban Safari. Safaris are journeys. I always embrace new moments, new travels.

Like all adventures the trick for a successful journey is to return with an accidental capture.

Strolling the streets of New York might be someone’s idea of a carnival life. But it too remains as quiet as a concrete jungle at night: as quiet as a river at night: as quiet as a safari at night. Yet all three have something in common; There is a whisper that alerts the camera to go “snippety snap snap”. The Rosehill building was not a choice, but the angle of repose needed to be realized.

All of the above is akin to my living history.

Film's Slow Demise

March 09, 2023

Rafael Vinoly

I have used film for my photographs for five decades. Film always reminds me of books I have read.

The memory of a book on bookshelf is a connection to things I have learned the things I have seen, things I have felt. One book cover allows me to recall a hundred parcels of passages that were meant for just my eyes, just my heart.

I can look at my acid-free photography archival notebooks and speak about each frame hidden among them as if the photo was made today or fifty years ago. Each transparency has a ten thousand word essay attached. My memories go places that are clearly present. The memories take me places so riveting that I can feel a hand I touched or see the color of a sky that I have not seen in decades.

When people die who have lived in my archives for a day or a decade, a part of me vanishes into a Bardo or a free ride along the River Styx. Funny, never above the clouds.

The lives of others live in some form of chrome: Kodachrome or something grander or even smaller. The life of others Iive with me every waking moment.

When the great Fred Astaire died my mind hovered somewhere, recalling the lunch by his pool. When the great Gene Kelly died, I just kept thinking about the hot dog barbecue I did not attend.

The events seemed insignificant at the time; But time changes the way we see our past, present and future in mysterious ways. Sometimes the emulsion shifts on those chromes, the memories remain,

They are life builders: Some of the most significant days of my life.

When death stands before me, I feel something broken in me. I want to recast the past, and make the past the present. Oh well, I am not Galileo or Einstein imagining the way we should observe the physics of the universe. I am just a guy who can remember every gesture, every space and every shard of light that lives on my film in my life. I just have a hard time letting go of my past. Even if I were to destroy the tens of thousands of images there is not a frame I would forget.

Vinoly’s Walkie Talkie:The Fenchurch Building

I was not close to the architect Rafael Vinoly. We met through the New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp. I met him again when he reigned with Frederic Schwartz over the “Think”

Group for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center.

Vinoly’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

I met a hundred architects in those times. There was something about Rafael. I went to his office to shoot his portrait for my book “Portraits of the New Architecture”. He understood the process. My process. I was documenting the world of architecture and the people who designed it.

While shooting, I realized I could have stood Vinoly on two naked donkeys braying David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and Rafael would have still gone along with my session. It was the same for Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly: they wanted to participate in my world.

When I read the Rafael Vinoly New York Times obituary, I was shaken, not because of a friend lost, I did like him as a person and an architect) but a unique and possibly a crucial piece of my world vanished.

The event reminded me of the Chinese game “Go”. “Go” is a strategic game. “Go” is a game where momentum is realized and rewarded. My life’s creation of thousands of playing parts (transparencies and negatives) has been about wild strategies and pivotal momentum. Possibly thousands of moves live within the game “Go”. Think about what the loss of a single piece, a single player in the game means.

Vinoly’s 277 Fifth Avenue dancing with the Empire State Building

The Greatest Days from A to Z: It is All About The Day and Edward Curtis

March 02, 2023

I have lectured about my photography. I always consider what I should talk about when I prepare a lecture about my photography. I always consider who I have photographed. I always consider where I have been. I always consider the experiences I have encountered. I know that people are attending to listen to what I might say about my history: They want stories.

I reflect on the thousands of portraits and the thousands of architectural designs. I stare at my archives. My mind weakens. My heart pumps. My ideas disappear.

I do have a failsafe method to recall what I need to say, what I want to share: I playCharades with myself. It is never about the words, names or places. Charades begins when a piece of celluloid or a printed image appears before my eyes. My memories shift into overdrive. I laugh full throttle. One single visual image triggers a line of thinking that on any given day can travel from a day when I was two, to a dream that I may have had and forgotten many years before.

I love the visual arts. I have seen millions of images from every medium. I adore a great handful of photographers. The image and the story that transports me across my photography universe, is from Edward Curtis’s Monument Valley series. The “Canyon de Chelly- Navajo”. The image is not even his best. But when I first saw it as an eighteen year old, I knew that was the life I wanted for myself. I wanted to be the one who made that photograph.

1904 was a bit before my time. But that image has penetrated my heart like few others. It told a story through the narrative of not just the location, but the techniques of photography. This eighteen year old boy was hypnotized. I wanted to be the one who made something that takes your breath away that steals something from your soul.

What Curtis really accomplished for me was something very simple and simple in a way that many photographers strive to do: He showed me the way to introduce my world through my photography.

I did not have any interest in recreating scenes like Curtis did. I wanted to capture what I saw in the moment and allow the spaces to speak for themselves. Curtis had a bit of the fabrication in his shots. He re-imagined the ways of the Indians. But most importantly for me, he was where the photograph needed to be made. I wanted that feeling of “being there”.

My architecture, my artists, my places are archived by my history. They represent a bit of my needs to be here, there and everywhere. It breaks my heart every time a place is demolished (Like the recently demolished Nakagin Capsule in Tokyo that I luckily did get to photograph) or a person or place is taken from the earth before I can make a picture that should not be missed. If an opportunity to make a moment is lost, I feel a bit lost. I feel as if I had not made the memory, made the effort to see what my camera needs to see.

I love photography, but there are times that I believe that it is not that the photograph matters so much;

It is the life that matters.

That is why Curtis’s Monument Valley image matters so much to me: I wanted to be there. I wanted to photograph my own monuments, my own valleys.

So I race. I race some more. I race until there will be no more breath to inhale. Then I snippety snap snap and allow the story to begin. I gather myself to discover another place and time. I continue to look for the valley, the image that stirs my heart and my imagination.

Museum of Contemporary Art by Alvaro Siza Porto Portugal

The Life Of A Portrait: Two Naked Giant Komodo Dragons Do The Dance

February 23, 2023

ANONYMOUS ARTIST

It was the season to touch your toes in the waters of the seven seas:

We were like two giant naked Komodo Dragons: We were like two dragons gnawing on the fat of a water buffalo: We were naked giant dragons hissing at each other like a giant gas leak before an explosion. We stood upright: The artist threw the whole alphabet of expletives in my face.

In more than four decades as a photographer, there has never been a more ripe time to shoot “the portrait”. It could have been a single frame from James Cagney’s “Man of a Thousand Faces”. Each arc of eyes, lips, cheeks and the flow of hair was made for a portrait moment: A portrait of an irrational man: The portrait of a nightmare: I finally saw the ego of a monster in the manner of a naked giant Komodo Dragon.

The photograph might have been a masterpiece. But that artist was dead to me. The portrait needs to be a celebration and dance between the camera and the subject who may or may not illuminate his/her colors. It need not be a confrontation of ego and art.

I saw the facts through my viewfinder. I saw what the portrait needs. I walked out of the studio that day sans portrait.

Street Portrait

Portraiture is akin to archaeology. You enter the mind and soul of a man or woman. You are digging to discover their treasures. Volumes of histories live in the person(s) whose emotional vault has unbeknownst to the self, suddenly and unmistakably open to be robbed of what is clearly part of the heart: The subjects’ vulnerability.

Philip Johnson

One of my most enjoyable days shooting a portrait was a symphony of pleasures. The wily genius of a man who shared his life experiences and intuitively begged me to realize that he was sharing all but his nakedness.

The moment a soul speaks to you, the camera, the portrait photographer has to recognize what is being shared and “snippety snap snap” a simple particle of whoever the self is, is captured.

Portraiture is the science and art of something that not a single person unequivocally understands.

But the relationship between the camera and the moments is the most unmistakable invitation to a dance that has existed for nearly three hundred years.

The moment with Philip Johnson might have been my “Zorba” moment. We danced. It was a mystifying pace that may be best seen cinematically. Yet each frame was an image about Philip and the photographer. The camera is quite equipped to capture a nanosecond. The camera captured many memorable moments. Philip was ninety years old. It would be impossible to say, “this was Johnson”. The reality reflected over five hours of a day was merely another film frame.

The Couple

The day I photographed Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne was about the meeting of fellow dancers. We did not merely share stories of the mind, but we paired our lives. We stood a few generations apart. We could have been dancing a Tango: A moment where Joan, John and Richard became dancers sharing of intertwining lives. Three travelers of minds, cities, countries and experiences made a singular moment in a single frame of film.

I have always thought that we were in the frame, not merely Joan and John. I participated. It should never be he or she, it is always we in the frame.

I have died a few thousand times when the portrait becomes human. I have only once encountered the naked giant Komodo Dragon. It was the most distasteful experience as a photographer.

Joan and John helped me realize that making a portrait can be a “soft shoe” a pirouette or an Astaire. Most importantly it is a symphony of movement.

Everyone I Have Known

Today I shoot everything architectural. When I think back on my mind as a portrait photographer, there is no single truth, there is only the ability to engage the mind as an archaeologist seeking evidence that the moment was there.

Is there a greater moment than the “aha” moment.

I would be lying if the tiniest moment of discovery was not worth a celebration.

Portraiture is not about the whole, it is merely about a kaleidoscope of microscopic windows.

Like A Fever of Manta Rays Pursued By a Combine Of A Dozen Orca Pods: Collecting Architecture

February 16, 2023

Oh to be free and not at the mercy of another: That is what Cyrano and Quixote may have bellowed into the winds.

I have landed in most cities with an agenda defined for me: Miami was part of my portrait session with TED Founder Richard Wurman. London was part of my commission to photograph one hundred buildings. Shenzhen was part of a lecture series. Dubai was associated with a lecture series in Bangladesh. Barcelona was a part of a mentor series. The list is lengthy but you get the point.

I pace my entry into countries and cities as if I am among a “Fever of Manta Rays” being chased by a combine of a dozen Orca pods. I may miss some potential gems, but my mind is constantly hosting a gallery of possibilities that my camera must adhere to. Like my equals, the Mantas, I am on the run.

I am an everyday bobbin boy collecting architecture. It can be exhausting, but it is the only way I know how to make sense of what needs to be accomplished. For every building I race to, I return many times during the course of a day of days to make sense of the light, footprints and perspectives. My feet in dozens of languages have asked: “aren’t you tired?”. I try and discover the heart of architectural design and history of most cities. I need to dot all of the “i’s”. I need not forsake the experience and the luxuries of travel. I need to share why I am lucky. To share what I see and feel. That is what my camera can do if I set it free.

Looking For Picasso

Nicholas Grimshaw: Philip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science :: Miami

“Run” says the hunter to the prey! In Miami, south of Collins Avenue I found Grimshaw. Across the globe I found Thom Mayne. Across the globe from him I found Nouvel, Adjaye and almost an inconceivable massive numbers beyond.

I have found masterpieces the way Ray Bradbury discovered Picasso: Bradbury’s short story “In a Season of Calm Weather”: It is essentially about looking for Picasso. My entire career has been looking for that “aha” moment in life and in photography. Decades into my photography career I have met the moment a mere few times.

David Adjaye: Photography Gallery; London

The focus on a considered collection of photographs has enabled me to discover where Picasso will appear in my camera. Yes Picasso is dead, but his greatness is the high bar for the past century.

So obviously whether it may be a person I meet or a descriptive built architectural design, I continue to measure my place in photography based on the Picassos I have encountered.

Greatness is relative. But it is alive in my cities and countries my camera has exposed.

The explanation for the blogs title? I am being chased by forces much greater than the reality of my imagination. All is for naught if I cannot outrun the demons and find what the Gods, Marco Polo, Charles Darwin, and Neil Armstrong saw.

Artists in a Bird Cage

February 09, 2023

I think my cultural memories have been the basis for whatever creative life I may have. So many cinematic and literary moments have adjusted who I was and who I might be. If you could only feel my pulse in those moments.

It isn’t the the actors Boris Karloff, Vincent Price nor Jack Nicholson in The Pit and the Pendulum that remain with me today: It is the haunting Black Birds.

The Birdman of Alcatraz was a great vehicle for Burt Lancaster, but for me it was “Strouds” passionate affair with the canaries that spirited my senses.

The book, “H is for Hawk” resonates with me for many reasons; But the affair between the hawk and woman addresses the inner passions that live within a sense of loneliness. We all need to discover our unique spirit to fly.

William Wharton’s “Birdy” fed into my imagination the most imaginable but unrealistic thoughts: That I could fly. But when I have considered what I might have to do to fly, I…

I certainly could write about ten thousand words about the culture of memory and how it relates to birds and my psyche. My memories are awakened by some electrical trigger function in my consciousness. So in a small way, you now know why I write these blogs: not only to share, but to tickle the dormant conscious to come alive to remember. It doesn’t matter what comes to my mind. I merely wish for you to see me as if you might see John Derian’s Phrenology Head: to read me is to know how my mind works.

Birds have always played an emotional and visual role in my life and career.

I remember running full throttle down a mountainside in San Francisco’s Muir Woods. Camera in hand I was racing like a teenager to make a snap shot of a Red Tailed Hawk. Run, run, run my mind screamed. I raced towards a cliff that I was not aware of. My Converse shoes braked just a few feet from the edge. Still I was unaware of my immediate danger until I snapped my shutter a dozen times like a gunfighter in a shootout emptying his gun to no avail: The hawk got away, my life was spared.

When I was very young, I wanted to move to London to work with a photographer who traveled the world photographing birds.

When my career was on the move, I made my first successful photograph of a bird: A dead bird in the hands of the artist Henry Moore. I only made one print from that experience: it is in the hands of a friend from my childhood.

When I peeked my head into the studio of the Italian artist Francesco Clemente; the first thing I noticed was my mind composing the portrait of the artist seated next to a Mynas’ bird cage.

When Andy Warhol suggested I photograph him with Jean Michel Basquiat; my eyes immediately spotted the lone birdcage in the studio.

When I scoped out the studio of the artist Terry Winters, there was this bird.

When I met with the artist Raymond Pettibon, a bird cage silhouette was placed prominently across Raymond’s canvas.

When I sat with the painter Isabel Bishop, I was struck by the shadow of a birdcage across her canvas.

A bird found its way into my portrait of the artist Vija Celmins.

Do I see my bird portraits as an homage to Cartier-Bresson? He photographed Henri Matisse with multiple birds. Or by chance, do I intellectually own these that I have seen and made over the decades?

I remember photographing together Isamu Noguchi and Alberto Burri. A fantastic moment for at least Art History’s sake: But the art dealer stole the role of film. Aside from that devastating loss was a seminal alluring call. The studio adjacent to the gallery: The artist Hunt Slonem supposedly had hundreds of birds in cages and among the rafters in his studio. While shooting Noguchi and Burri I knew the birds were cooing for me to swing the studio door open and “shoot”. The birds reminded me of the the Sirens who sang out to Odysseus.

All I could think about were the multitudes of bird poop. “Oh to be among them, among the living.

It was a dream at one point to stand in the center of “Hunt’s studio, and to point my 8 mm fisheye lens in the appropriate direction. I needed to capture the embracing encounter.

I never needed to visit the jungles on earth to marry with birds. But as a photographer of people and the known built environment, birds have always proved arresting, and placed my mind at rest.

A client alone in a vast part of America catered to the every need of his parrot. The parrot returned the attentiveness. Every time the owner of the parrot would walk by the parrot, the parrot would sing; “waddle, waddle, waddle where are you going fatty”.

Life of a House Part 2

February 03, 2023

Oscar Niemeyer’s “Strick” House Los Angeles

I will never be able to get Joan Didion out of my head

Reflections from a life lived

Sometimes I lie in bed with a bit of a panic in my mind. I consider thousands of architectural examples: Why have I traveled to hear them whisper What are my ghosts within telling me?

What were my instructions about photographing a famed Hollywood studio head’s home in Malibu?What is it about me that needed to capture the house that the Japanese Architects “SANNA designed. Why is Oscar Niemeyer always touching my cameras?When I traveled to Los Angeles and Tokyo, I think I found some answers: Joan Didion described what might be the potential murder and mayhem behind the white picket fences. Walter Benjamin once described the centuries of history behind the glass walls of the Parisian Arcades.

My camera needs to define “The Life of a House”.

The Charles Gwathmey Design:

I was given strict orders not to move or touch anything in the home. I wandered to the Malibu beachfront. I marched to the Pacific Coast Highway. It was like smoking a cigar. You need to get a feel and a smell for your moment.

Charles Gwathmey: Hollywood Producer’s Home Malibu California

I entered the house. I measured the degree of interesting wealth. I made aesthetic assumptions that only mattered in the moment. Most importantly, I saw the power of “Charlie’s” design. I made dozens of photographs thinking I was shooting to impress the architect, and the owner of the house.

Most importantly I found my gait. I stepped, strode, and tippy toed from room to room; window to window. I was like Magellan, I was an adventurer discovering the world of Charles Gwathmey for the very first time.

SANNA in Tokyo:

Before SANNA was a celebrated firm, they were merely a whisper among Architecture’s “exclusive”. It was considered a coup for me to have this opportunity to shoot their portrait, and examples of their work.

The pressure was in the time of the day. They (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa) were about to leave town (Tokyo) so my clock schedule for the day was in a state of anticipatory shock. They also were about to internationally explode not only into the minds of Architects and fans of such works. They would soon become among the “it” team across the globe.

When I was directed to photograph one of their earliest designs, I thought “hmmm, a house”.

When the rain stopped that afternoon one of their assistants let me out of the car in front of the non descriptive house. The assistant said she would be back in a few hours to pick me up.

The sun appeared. The shadows softened. The color of the light whispered. Joan Didion warned

me to watch out for the unknown; sometimes the simplest of moments can be the most harrowing.

I knocked at the door. Nobody answered. I heard sounds. I walked down and away on one street.

I turned back for one last look. I realized everything in the world of architecture and in the life of this house was beckoning my camera: Texture, narrative and maybe a quiet scream; “I got it” made my photograph. This tiny house was captured in one frame. I will never know if that is all I needed.

Oscar Niemeyer in America:

Oscar Niemeyer designed home Los Angeles California

Oscar’s lone free standing building in North America is a gem. Is it among his best or absurdly beautiful: No. But it is a fabulous cousin to some of his great works. One can easily understand why a few memorable architects like Zaha Hadid and Ma Yansong seemed to have have a touch of the Niemeyer DNA… and follow his tenets across the globe.

When I arrived at the “Strick” home in Los Angeles I felt like Jack Nicholson arriving at the hotel in “The Shining”; Excitement and danger lurked. My mind’s electrolytes lit up.

A lush garden, metal designed spears, and blinding sunlight welcomed me. Yet I had only to that point lifted my body above the eight foot wall. I wanted a sneak preview before my hosts gave me their tour.

Once inside, and after multiple days shooting, I realized after all of my years shooting fabulous buildings, it was the small things that mattered. It was Walter Benjamin whispering; “look, look for the history, look for the story, look for the reflections that will reveal even more if you allow your eyes to bend for the moment.

Listen for Oscar’s ghost”.

The Life of a House

January 26, 2023

Jaipur, India

I have been remiss a few times in my life. When I have missed an opportunity to make a photograph that matters, my mind sits in purgatory for a very long time.

It haunts me that I did not take control of the moment and stop the bus I was riding in Jaipur, India.

The bus raced along the river. I heard only the river’s calm as the water rushed past me. All keys of sound from within, were frozen.

I saw a kneeling woman dressed in a bright full red Sari. She bowed several times in the direction of the dead figure leaning against a tree wrapped like a mummy in white material. The tree appropriately and respectfully braced the body before either it was laid bare into the rushing waters or enkindled for the wishes and demands of the gods.

I merely pressed my face to the bus window. My mind knew that the rituals end was near. My heart broke. I could neither save a life, nor fulfill my desires as a photographer. I only had to whisper. “Stop the bus” before the body disappeared into the god’s house.

“Our house is a very, very, very fine house”. Written by Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

Buildings represent the transformation of the urban environment. But a house has stories: I seem to remember Joan Didion suggesting that beyond the white pristine picket fence of a suburban house, secrets may live.

When I first drove up to Philip Johnson’s “Glass House”, I thought about the naked ghosts who might been seen posing, strolling or dancing behind the glass walls.

I have walked straight into history’s architecture for decades. Sometimes the significant stories and myths become like blinders to the realities of the special. One becomes so mesmerized by the folklore that it’s becomes difficult to see the photograph that needs to be made; and so I shoot!

And then just maybe, there was Philip sitting in the corner with a bit of revealing Cheshire Smile.

The Glass House and Philip Johnson in one frame is probably an anomaly in modern architecture history. That kind of matters. What matters most is that the house became one of the most significant examples of a Modernist design in the twentieth-century. What embraces me is the knowledge that I can die knowing that for a fleeting moment, I danced with history.

My decades of photography have taught me that merely a handful of personalities become synonymous with greatness. Imagination gets the better of you. You start to imagine the worlds that came before you. What is it like to be grand, and adored. The company that mingles in those circles are fascinating creatures. Like with Philip Johnson, sometimes the myths overtake your vision. To be a photographer and separate myth from reality for audiences eyes is also a task to deal with.

Fame comes in many shapes and sizes. All I can do is shoot and hope history remembers the pictures not for what they become, but for what they were when I made them.

When I landed in Rio de Janeiro I had many agendas for my photography. I hoped that I would carve out enough time to photograph Oscar Niemeyer’s home: Casa das Canoas: Like Johnson’s house, this Niemeyer was and is Modernist history.

Upon arriving at das Canoas I felt a bit like Stanley and Livingstone. My assistant carried my bags as I pushed forward through one of the most lush tropical gardens I have ever seen.

Like all adventurers the word is “behold”. My god I was stunned to see the Brazilian coast and the house sandwiched together like a Jerry Uelsmann photograph. If only Oscar was sitting poolside drawing his plans for the brilliance that das Canoas would become.

Brazil is not Connecticut. I imagine exotic personalities in bikinis and dangling long black cigarette holders. I imagine the dance that exist in clubs and along the sands of Rio. Exotic travel can manifest many real hallucinations.

As for Oscar’s portrait I realized that in his Copacabana studio.

I have photographed a great number of Kengo Kuma’s architectural structures. But here was something unique to the landscape. I could hear Ennio Morricone’s The Mission (Gabriel's Oboe) - YouTube. I didn’t remember inhaling until I exhaled. I realized I had found a playground for my photography. Maybe this was something more, like a dream. Madhatters and Wolverines might have stepped through the trees and into the residence before nightfall.

I could hear the calm through the leaves of a thousand trees that encircled the house. There could be no discordant sounds. The conversation could only be limited to whispers. I can’t imagine fame nor exotica. But I could see period representation possibly from the Victorians through the Edwardians. Just maybe hallucinogens might have been passed around the table before dinner time. There are only a few architects like Kengo Kuma whose designs transport your mind to imaginary places that are real.

ZULU NATION and GERHARD RICHTER

January 19, 2023

I first encountered the Zulu nation in Michael Caine’s film “Zulu”. It was believed that the Zulu walked across deserts and mountains to hunt and defend and conquer lands. I too have walked across deserts, mountains.

I was not beaded or adorning weapons or charms. I walked among the concrete and glass mountains and valleys of cities. I walk and I dream. I dream of new adventures but I dream about what my camera may capture along the way.

There is no obstacle that can prevent my camera from seeing what is naturally mine to snippety snap snap snap. For seconds in everyday, I am Zulu.

The above is the way I have lived for decades. The above is why I have traveled across continents to make photographs of people and places that are inspirations to my way of living.

I am not a romantic. I am a twenty-first century clone for Thomas de Quincey,Jack Kerouac, Sir Richard Burton and Walter Benjamin: I roam, I race, I travel and I stroll.

Their pens have written about the way the world looks. My camera has attempted to imitate worlds, words and perceptions of the roads traveled.

I remember an editor of a Parisian magazine suggesting I take the Metro: “It will be faster”. I had no need for speed on my way from the home of the French dramatist Pierre Corneille to the home of the French surrealist Andre Masson. I had walked from Montmartre to Montparnasse, why would I need speed. Why would I want to be below ground when everything a lens needs to see is above ground. The few times I rode the Moscow subway I always wondered what was above ground. I crossed the Seven Hills of Moscow bellowing; “I am in Russia for god’s sake.

I remember walking along, across and around Dubai. I reminded myself that I needed to rest. But would T.E Lawrence rest? Rest for what.

I walk everyday with intervening pirouettes. My camera freeze frames everything. A crowd of people might hear my camera snap, and my feet spin. I animate my mind as if I am the animated Roadrunner racing above the valley with everywhere to go. Certain not to fall.

But what is the point of being somewhere if the life of the camera doesn’t engage the lights and places that you have never seen before. Maybe you are revisiting places you have been to one hundred times before. But even then there is magic not yet seen. Whether a fresh view of the land, or one visited many times, the camera is the divining rod, if you allow it to lead.

Then there was the artist Gerhard Richter.

I Imagined that I was walking almost naked down New York City’s Broadway one night to destinations unknown.

I landed at a Jean Nouvel building. I was seemingly staring into an abyss. The abyss was a boring staged interior in a Nouvel building. Suddenly a tv screen popped up. It was a bit like a twilight zone moment.

A handful of artists have been on my list for sometime. I have spoken to them on the phone at one time or another. I have reconciled with the misses; Their voices just awaken me from time to time. I just didn’t get them: Chagall, Freud, Bacon, Dubuffet, and most heart breaking, Jacob Lawrence.

There on the television with all of his powers on display was Richter describing his painting process. I sat in my near nakedness on a sofa. I almost cried. I have traveled thousands of miles. I made thousands of phone conversations.

And there was Gerhard Richter. A beast in the art world a living giant who I had pursued. Almost naked. Alone in my imagination. Here in this staged portal, I find one of my missing links on the tele. Here is my portrait.

I may never travel again.

A Journey Through So Many Places: Russia’s Potemkin

January 11, 2023

Lydia Tár said, “Hope is the last to die”. Every Ukrainian must embrace that notion.

Sometimes I believe that Vladimir Putin’s life is ripped from the pages of the Devil’s Bible: The Codex Ciga. How else can you explain the atrocities that continue to embroil the Russia today. Yes I watch from afar. Yes I read what I can. When I reflect on the five or six times I visited the former Soviet Union, I can’t help by feeling saddened by this present Putin ego driven catastrophe.

Enemies of the state are being thrown out of windows: poisoned with umbrella tips and obviously much worse.

The first Russians I encountered were from the pages of Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Pushkin Solzhenitsyn. And of course more. Their words made me dream about dreams. Their earliest passages froze a separate set of eyes inside my mind; To this day those eyes and my camera’s eyes still dream while I make photographs; I dream of the photographs I have taken and the photographs that will be. Maybe all Russians are from the fantasy village of Potemkin: Maybe Potemkin for me is my own Brigadoon

I remember riding along Tsverskaya ( Gorky Street) enroute from Sheremetyevo airport to the Hotel National in Red Square.

My taxi ride made me feel like an escapee from the 18th-century Potemkin: Centuries of Asia’s faces; Baltic, Mongol, Uzbek, Scythian, Slavic glossed over my right and left iris. The taxi ferried my comfort companions: Le Carré, Len Deighton and Michael Caine; voices and personalities who could guide me through intricate moments.

Espionage was in the air. My only instructions flying from New York to Moscow: Do not open the envelope. I carried an envelope from Industrialist Armand Hammer to a man in a very old building. A man who might have owned one suit. A man who seemed grateful to see me. I man who smiled broadly when he realized I had not opened the envelope. A man who hurried me out to the streets with a strict wave. John, Len and Michael asked me how the meeting went. I think they knew I was a pawn of some sort. But that exchange, along with sponsorship from Kodak and Nikon delivered six weeks of photography: I photographed hundreds of people: creatives, artists and ballerinas and the monumental sculptors, museum officials the mix was amazing.

caressing art at the Hermitage: Boris Piotrovsky

Then there were the moments. I reflect with joy and tears the immensely powerful experiences I had among so many in Moscow, Leningrad (now back to its original St. Petersburg) Kiev, Tbilisi, Riga, Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and more. I tried to meet Peter the Great but missed him by a few hundred years.

I visited many Russian laureates in (Novodevichy cemetery). I traveled to dachas and danced with probable KGB operatives. I was harassed by the KGB in trench coats.

Six weeks was my hello. Three hundred portraits was my hello. My subsequent visits were “so we meet again”.

Everyday my cameras were loaded for bear. Everyday my many hosts offered me some giggle juice.

Eighteen hour days: You might have found me just outside the dressing room at the Bolshoi or the Kirov. I cannot remember a day that I was not caressing the canvas of an artist’s work or near leaning into period greatness at a museum in any of the above mentioned cities. I share the above because I. Don’t want memories tarnished by today’s atrocities. I know that is a selfish way to think. But everyone should have a small selfish side. I wish that everything happening in the Ukraine is a Potemkin, a fantasy. I could then go back to embracing the past without seeing today’s blood in the news.

My memories are ripe and thoroughly enriching. Some days I look back on my experiences as if I was a naked Mouflon swirling round and round with joy: My curved spiral horns blessed in the winds of past, present and what may be the future.

Me Trying to gaze into history in St Petersburg

The Bridges Between Art and Architecture and…

December 22, 2022

The Bridge:

I stood naked in a room filled with art. I felt as if I had been captured in a chapter of John Fowles’,“The Collector”. I remember peering out of a silken clothed covered window. A new construct: Sir Norman Foster’s London Millennium Bridge floated a walking path across the River Thames. The English with a teacup in hand might have said, “splendid”. I merely examined the moment as a one of a kind. Years later, I realized that onlookers probably only saw my lonely figure, as I stood naked like a whale with suspenders.

The Galapagos:

From my very first portrait I felt like I had signed up to travel on Darwin’s HMS Beagle. I was searching for the origins of something; I didn’t have a plan. I was merely thinking about creating a chromogenic (genetic) map among the world’s creatives. I was tapping into the ocean’s currents to destinations unknown. I wanted to go anywhere and meet anyone. Those thoughts and beginnings led me to thousands of people and places that posed for my camera.

For my first dozen years in New York, I never said no. I was a white “go-ishi”: a white stone in the game of “Go”. With so many Go moves to consider, it was as if I attempting to roundup all of the atoms in the universe. I think this endeavor might have started with de Kooning or Noguchi;

The bridge before me, became a personal reveal. It dawned on me that I was witnessing life’s visual clarity. I had been tethered between art and architecture and more for decades. I was standing surrounded by art in an interior space. Looking north a creative marriage between artist Anthony Caro and architect Norman Foster splayed out beautifully across the river; The connecting architectural bridge became symbolic of my career.

Recently announced was the artist Kiki Smith’s adornments for the New Grand Central Madison Station. I recalled my portrait session with Kiki. I recalled all of the Grand Central Station photographs I had taken. I recalled the father daughter bridge between the artist Tony Smith and Kiki. The word bridge has so many connotations that my mind rests on connections.

I have photographed so many people and places that my photographs and experiences have roots in my past and present. I flood my pages with personal history. The word bridge keeps playing with my mind. The bridges between the arts.

Thousands of names, thousands of photographs have been bridging my life to people and eras; Roland Penrose, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Oscar Niemeyer, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas. Like a dreamer I get lost in reverie. But the reverie only springboards me to another day another moment.

My photographs illustrate my careers bridges. Kiki and train stations, Caro and Foster, Oldenburg and Gehry, Heatherwick and Bjarke and more dance through my mind like notorious sprites decorating my brain’s dream lobe. They are constant reminders of my life’s standing. I am tethered to the bridges that have allowed my camera to criss cross like Cat’s cradle through generations of creators.

A Continent of Architects and Architecture

December 08, 2022

#EduardoSoutadeMoura #Porto Highrise #Pritzker Prize

Walter Cronkite, Anthony Bourdain, Sinbad and Antoine de Saint-Expuéry unwittingly influenced my visions for tomorrow: “You Are There” is sort of my raison d’etre to make pictures. I always wanted to be where there was. For decades I have wanted to offer my voice, and my eyes to share a vision of lives and worlds not often seen.

As I was landing in Lisbon my mind was mapping out my itinerary for Europe. I dreamed that I might use a gondola to fly above Europe’s 44 countries. I wanted to see what the clouds see. I wanted to listen to Milton Nascimento’s “Ponte de Areia” echoing between the Alps. I wanted to hear the great Brazilian singer whisper “Wayne Shorter, are you there”. Yes, it would be one of many sounds that would pace my days.

I made my way to Porto, Portugal to meet with Pritzker Prize recipient Eduardo Souto de Moura. I was not emotionally or intellectually prepared for my days in Porto, nor my day with the architect.

My battle plan for capturing Europe was about to become disrupted. I was not an organized man. I wanted to be like General George Patton or Field Marshall Montgomery racing to Berlin near the end of the war. But I am not. I too was eventually heading to Berlin. But not like the two military heroes who were vying to see who would wear Darwin’s crown for the “…fittest…”

I took a deep breath and replayed Nascimento in my head. I was about to have one of the finest days a photographer could have. It has not been uncommon for an architect to say;” Maybe we can reschedule for next year”. But that is not Eduardo. He is a prince.

He knew that this visit was my first of nearly 20 stops from Portugal to Finland. So when we met at his studio, I could not have imagined his plan for the morning and afternoon. I had already for two days documented Porto for what I needed. There is always more.

We were like two dancing bears in his studio. Both of us were being more polite than the other. It was a dance that cannot be forgotten; Two great girths immobilized, yet dancing like animated bears with grace. The session was a success.

We got in his car and headed to destinations unknown. We pushed past the prostitutes. We drove past the fish mongers. We looked up at the giant neon signage for the great port wines: Sandeman, Quinta. and more. We parked in front of one of his favorite restaurants for lunch. We may have had a 10 course meal. It might have been 20 courses. But who cares how much we ate or drank. The meal and hours of conversation about architecture and desires for a future was a sensation.

Apparently his scheduled plan for me was to share and endear. We drove to an apartment complex. We parked. He looked out the window of his car. He pointed to his apartment and to Alvaro Siza’s apartment and to Fernando Tavora: Three great giants under the same roof. I just wanted to organize a barbecue and invite the neighborhood. How great it was to hear how the three migrated to the same building: Became great friends. I snapped one building which three Portuguese heroes were linked like legos.

#FernandoTavaro #Eduardo #Siza The three amigos

After that we drove to two of his designs. After that he suggested that I might want to see a Rem Koolhaas music center. All the while Miles Davis could be heard on his car stereo. I have photographed Miles twice. Anything that connects people to the king of jazz is pure euphoria.

At every architectural stop he motioned me to get out and take some pictures; You should record what you see while you are here he said. So I snapped Rem, Siza and Eduardo in succession. I could feel Eduardo wondering what I might be seeing. He merely smiled when I returned to his car. His eyes asked me if I was happy. How could I not be: architecture, photography, travel, food and wine, what could be better in that moment for this photographer.

#Museudeartecontemporaneadeserralvesporto #AlvaroSiza

There were moments when I could feel the pull of my greats tasks ahead to make pictures across the continent. I had times and dates fleeting around my brain. I needed to meet my commitments.

But when I remember my day with Eduardo I sometimes wonder why I didn’t pause the earth’s rotation while in Porto. Eduardo’s world was enormous. I wanted more of it.

I had to quicken my pace. My European map was already inked. If I was going to charge across the hinterlands like Patton and Monty I would have to speed things up.

I flew to Provence for Kengo Kuma. I flew to Berlin for David Chipperfield. I took a train to Paris for Odile Decq. I managed my way to London for Grimshaw. I rested in Rotterdam for a bit before I photographed Winy Maas and MVRDV.

I think I framed more than one hundred buildings. I made one dozen portraits. I salvaged twenty images made for my book. Travels and shooting sessions are things the gods control. I was just along for the ride. It was an adventurous ride: If each one compared to my days in Porto, then I was living a dream.

All of the above names and places will follow in future posts. They are stories that I love to tell.