The Architecture of Cities: The World

September 28, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: The World

I remember sitting astride my motorcycle. I raced along blvd’s as if I was Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape”. My passions rise. Cinema delivers a boyhood joy of adventure.

One day while re-enacting McQueen’s exploits I landed in the hospital. Collateral damage can be an experience to celebrate. At some point you must realize that nature has a requiem for you.

I am not Cicero, merely passionate for the moment.

The triumvirate: We three became me.

The Spider Monkey can seem anxious, almost rabid. Their eyes constantly dart across Brazil’s tropical forests eyeing food and prey. The Golden Langur Monkey eyes a secret life of serenity along the Bhutan tree tops.

When I was very young, possibly as recent as yesterday, I dreamed that my camera’s eyes should embrace the monkeys’ behaviors. I was one, now I am three.

Preposterous? I realized it has already happened: My mind runs, rants and raves through the world’s streets. Yet my body hides in plain sight: I stand quietly in secret: My mind in a trance infused by an imagined mass of anabolic steroids. My mind flexes: My body flexes: I snare a few frames of architecture. My camera exposes the greats of past, present and future designs: Gehry’s, Hadid’s, Niemeyer’s Nouvel’s, Kuma’s. My images present their best sides, their best impressions of greatness. “We three” made some spectacular moments in photography.

It isn’t the geography that impresses an audience. It is always the images we share. The geography is merely about catching a plane, train or automobile: But the images elicit what dreams are made from:

One dream for instance, was to follow the Silk Routes conquered by Genghis Khan: When I landed In Hong Kong and Shenzhen my eyes filled with fairy dust: my fantasies’ realities were near.

My dreams to travel and make photographs were becoming my reality. In my quest to shoot and/or discover architecture and the light it wears, I travel. I travel from New York to New Orleans. I travel from Copenhagen to Amsterdam. I travel from Vienna to Paris. I travel from Tokyo to Kyoto.

I have stood in front of many buildings with only one objective: to make the reality seem unique.

Raleigh North Carolina Museum by ThomaPhiefer

But everyday in every city must have a unique identity: Iight has been my friend and adversary. My entire career has been challenged by the light made, the light nature gave me.

I am game to confront the A. S. M. (art, science and math) of photography each time. Whether the clock strikes 3:00 pm or twilights’ 5:00 pm I am there. Each landing on a new continent or in a new city presents my conflict with light hued balances.

My mind pauses: I conjure up a witches brew, a discourse within my photography. I exhume a few past visual dreams. I begin my interview with myself: photography 101 course: Where to begin.

You would think that after so many decades of making pictures: it would be a “snippety snap-snap”.

The world has a funny way of telling you what to do: It is almost like you have an obligation to the medium to make something more: This is Rio: This is Santa Fe: This is Delhi: This is Yusuhara: This is earth: This is my light: This is my photography

Without my motivations the pictures would land lusterless.

My interior metronome has a new pulse. My monkey’s in tow.

We begin again.

#RAFAELVINOLY #THEFENCHURCH #THEWALKIETALKIE

The Architecture of Cities: New York V

September 21, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: New York V

It is about aged beauty and the ghosts that stood where I stand.

There will always be a beginning: But my question has always been: What was before the beginning.

From the first day I realized I was not becoming, but had become a photographer, I imagined I was the Bowman/Star Child journeying through all of the known galaxies: I was not sure what I was looking for: But I knew I could not stop until I saw what I needed to see.

Maybe I was searching for my first Dominican Blue Amber. Maybe inside that particular amber a glossed in resin Praying Mantis resided: Imagine a mantis who might have resembled me: That frozen expression I wore when the camera discovered and I declared “That’s it”: snippety snap-snap!

My camera’s first diary began when I landed in New York City.

My camera has seen hundreds of cities. All cities are like a million tesserae mosaic on canvas. I see all the pieces of a building that I need to capture but where do I start from? How does one narrate the puzzle of a photograph that has not yet been made?

My work became symbiosis with my pleasures: Yes of course the reverse makes sense as well: The pleasures of the working eyes.

I stood at the southeast corner of 51st street and Lexington Avenue. The Morris Lapidus designed Summit Hotel was summoning my eyes. How could I make any other photographs in that moment?

Morris Lapiduc Architect; Hotel on 51st and Lexington

I am a sand-sifter. I could never merely say, “shoot”. For God’s sake I am the “Star Child” I have seen the entirety of the known galaxies. How could I merely make a snap. A sand-sifter is looking for a discovery: But not a soul knows what that is until…

I stood breathless: Not because of this moment alone: But my mind’s eyes had vaulted from New York to Miami. I was no longer merely making one photograph in front of the Summit: But my mind was dreaming of a second image: standing aside James Bond on the diving board stood framed over Morris Lapidus’s Hotel Fountainbleu’s cool pool blue. I was looking beyond just Morris Lapidus, but the architect’s body of architecture: My body had not budged: Was I alone in the streets of New York City, or was I breathing the warm Atlantic in a scene from Goldfinger. My eyes felt dilated as if on steroids. The mind’s eyes work that way with my heart.

Many years ago I brought my portfolio to the Hearst Corporation: It was something photographer’s religiously did in a long ago millennium.

I cannot remember anything about the people I met or was supposed to meet. I just remember that the patterns of design from interior ceiling to the lobby were of an elegance I had not met before.

Many years after that afternoon, I had the opportunity to shoot the portrait of the new Hearst Tower architect Sir Norman Foster. For some reason I think he remembers me fondly. I remember two dueling knights. In my perspective, it is such a brilliant marriage for the photographer: to have the knowledge of the architect and his words about his designs as you enter an organic library of information directing your eyes to what may become!

My camera is in love, I dance. My moves are a bit frightening to see.

I have been photographing the relationship between architecture’s old and new for decades.

Visiting Foster’s Hearst Tower, is like seeing an old friend: so much to see and catch up on. My eyes revisit the many possibilities. My personal narrative: Light, shape, history, footprint, and the discipline that is photography take over. I look up. I look around. I sneak a glimpse at the light in the sky. My mind does the jig: But I waltz across the avenue. My mind’s sundial calculates the time to click. I sand-sift. “There it is” I holler between my ears.

Foster’s Hearst is one of a few buildings that I remind my eyes to “sneak another peek”. I could possibly explain my reasoning in ten thousand words: It is about aged beauty and the ghosts that stood where I stand.

Neil Young whispers, “Old Man, look at my life”. I run, I dance, I wait. I wait to place another piece of the city’s tesserae mosaics in place. The mind’s honesty may sometimes be exhilarating. I dance some more.

I wonder what the lit up minds of Ken Kesey, Aldous Huxley and Owsley Stanley would make of how my mind’s eyes see the architecture of cities?

Kengo Kuma wrote to me that he “believes that to build architecture is to design light”.

Light designs my pictures.

The Architecture of Cities: New York Part 1V

September 14, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: New York Part 1V

If you would not mind toe stepping into peaceful urban madness. We might listen to one thousand songs: Or we might merely hear Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California”: Rolling Stones’s “Street Fighting Man”. But just maybe “Also Sprach Zarathustra ” sets the tone to follow me as I lift a lens to New York on this fine day.

We march along like kindred spirits: We wait to witness the manifestation of things that need our eyes. How many times have you witnessed a crimson alligator mating with a yellow swallow?

I tend to what my camera might see. I wait. I might as well be a botanist tending to ten newly bred orchids. Years pass.

I tend to what my camera might see. I wait. I might as well be an archaeologist tending to the preservation of a newly discovered artifact. Time will tell.

I tend to what my camera might see. I wait. I might as well be a psychiatrist tending to the mental ailments of a pining patient. Something will be revealed.

I tend to what my camera might see. I wait. I might as well be an astrophysicist tending to the nature of the universe. Stars talk.

How we will interpret what we see and the laws of the universe, all serve the same purpose: To understand what appears before us: to discovery and the knowledge that leads us forward.

The tools of some scientists may seem different than a photographer’s: but the purpose they serve are the same as my camera: The camera and lens are my tools that I carry daily. There is always an opportunity to excavate a city’s history that hides in plain sight.

I stare through my viewfinder. The time lapses from daylight to the twilight before the night. What have I captured? I might have been in India: I might have been in China: But where I have been or where I am in the moment, nothing changes: I wait.

Being a photographer: Capturing a photograph: Living with dreams: Reminds me that everyday I stand with my camera, I need to be like my owl: The flight of an owl seems silent to man’s ears: I stand in that same silence: My eyes too pose silently in anticipation of an image that might appear.

An owl can twist its head around some 270 degrees. It is less than my mind twists: but like the owl my mind quivers as the prey appears…we capture.

This architectural photographer approaches each and every commission or daily appraisal of architecture as if I am excavating the properties of the said building. There is a reveal. The camera lives to record the best moments: The best of architectural photography is when an audience of one or one million becomes a witness to that reveal. It is the light the eye sees in the highland valleys or the urban streets that matter.

Every picture shares a story: Family: Nature: Portraits: Interiors: Landscapes: All of the photographers I have admired have had one thing in common: A story exists to tell. Certain egos might deny their influences: But Roger Fenton, Eugene Atget, Herbert List, Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Angel Adams and more: At one time or another they hollered as I do:”That’s it”. That’s it is an endearing self awareness. All seasoned photographers know when they have been successful and why. They know their efforts: They utilized tools and heart to achieve.

You see, all of the above are scientists. They used everything they knew about the science, math and their heart to execute as well as possible. Those photographers were like Livingstone, Leakey, Burton and more. Everyone was searching for something to behold, the “aha”; just different methods.

If you can hear the silence a photographer sees, maybe the answers or discoveries are linked to Gerard de Nerval’s pet lobster: The silence and the secrets are found only in the deep. Nerval’s secrets were in the oceans’ deep: Mine are clearly in my mind.

Everyone with a camera or phone has something to share: The light, the moment or the experience.

I can talk endlessly about all of the cities I love shooting in: Tokyo, Paris, Mexico, London, Barcelona and one hundred more.

But for today, and the past few weeks I revel in the joy of stepping into my New York streets. For decades I have photographed the city as if I am saying “what’s new”.

Sometimes I hate to admit that I have these passions. But to have lived my life and still almost quiver when I see what matters to me: To come to terms with the manner in which I espied the discovery; Is an amazing part of this photographer’s life.

I leave you with one more idiosyncratic consideration: I can still hear the music all the way from my heart to my eyes: Cold Play’s “Clocks”??

When it matters most, make more
#KPF #Kohnpedersenandfox

The Architecture of Cities: New York Part 111

September 07, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: New York Part 111

Bookends: Benet’s to Benjamin and More

“Charlemagne”. Turn the page back. “Charlie Chaplin”. Turn the pages forward. “Chaucer”. Skip a few pages. “Darwin”. Close your eyes and grab a page. “Abraham Lincoln”.

I received Benet’s “The Reader’s Encyclopedia when I was maybe eleven or twelve years old.

I stare back into those twelve impressionable years. It was the moment when I realized that there was more! The gift that continues to give.

The world talks about the information highway. But my reality was a moment when a child stood alone in the middle of the universe and realized something new had entered the body.

The above mentioned book was that first intellectual reckoning.

#apple and the #SherryNetherlands on fifth avenue

Tracing my photograph’s history helps me realize how slow slow can be. I do remember the next moment where the motivational “more” appeared: I saw Jerry Uelsmann’s surreal“Philosopher’s Desk”. I was a fraction older: A day or two more mature: I realized more could became a possibility.

I have spent my entire photography life looking for the definition of more.

A miracle of nature appeared one day: I saw a picture: The jeweled ice of the Japanese Hokkaido Tokachi River: The river’s frozen mouth becomes blocks of ice opposing the sand and the ocean. The idea of natures visual power stirred the urgency of this photographer to make more.

To make the photographs I needed, I must have one foot on the ground and the other in a real phantasm. This is my path towards more.

I have read Don McLean wrote “American Pie” as an anthem to the end of a time. Periods come and go, but living for something new, something ahead in time can be such an amazing experience. I have dreamed that the end never comes: Reading Benet’s meant for me: our present and future will inevitably become the end. But in the meantime, seek the thrills that make it all worthwhile.

The day I read Walter Benjamin’s “Arcades Project” became a career jarring altered state:

If there was a reckoning of what to live for, it was my departure into the future via New York’s architectural history.

The “Arcades” made it possible for me to see not the present, but the three reasons to make photographs: to expose the past to the present and to share the present with the future. There are a number of cities to make this happen: but living for decades in New York all seemed so natural to make this city my canvas to see more.

The “Arcades” enlightened me: I look through architectures’ four squares of glass: life behind windows has so many layers of stories, that a single frame from me can be my homage to both Benet and Benjamin.

I always wanted to be like Benjamin’s flaneur in New York. But as a photographer I am not so sure a flaneur can see more than my camera seeking more from the trillion architectural experiences.

My photography goal is to replicate the experience that the idea of the Arcades presents in every frame until there is no more me: my photography phantasm ceases to be. So much history, so much culture, so much living for history ahead.

The engaging journalist Linda Ellerbee would sign off: “And So It Goes”.

The Architecture of Cities:New York: Part 2

August 31, 2023

The Architecture of Cities:New York: Part 2

If there is darkness then there must be light

The light into darkness, the darkness into light is the nature of my photography.

The camera lens at first glance is my personal window into the cities’ corridors: architectural’s past, present and future. This is where I see light mingling with darkness. This is where the reveal stops the heart. This is where photography begins.

THE DARKNESS:

Mary Shelley wrote the Frankenstein story in the darkness of candlelight. The World War 2 Dresden bombing in darkness blinded the pilots from seeing the horror. Thomas De Quincey’s “Confessions of an Opium Eater” was a frenzied darkness revealed. “Silence of the Lambs” was a soulless darkness discovered. Alice falling down the rabbit hole in darkness was a world revealed. Jack the Ripper allowed for darkness to follow the victims screams. “The Naked City” is where the mysteries of the dark live.

I have found that while walking alone in New York City’s darkness my imagination prevails over my reality: I walk among the shadowed chiaroscuro buildings and city life. My mind prompts a narrative. Every frame become a reality. A frame is a fictional account of non-fiction. I live in a cinematic dream; a cinematic nightmare. I listen to my camera’s “snippety, snap-snap”. A photograph that matters is made.

The Light:

The light is simple: Dancing naked atop two blue whales while crossing the seven seas: Skydiving from afar with New York City in sight: caressing the neck of a twenty-three foot reticulated python with my finger tips: these thrills give my electrolytes meaning.

I never ran to be in position. I saw a photograph that needed to be seen and I walked: It is a pace that made sense to get somewhere without drawing attention. In the moment I have never wanted anyone to see what I see. What I saw in my mind’s eye, always needed to be revisited one thousand more times: Imagine Alec Guinness’s character in The Bridge on the River Kwai: Alec was retrieved from his sun baked solitary confinement. His eyes raised to the sun: He blinked one thousand times in a nano second: His eyes began to see clearly: I too blink one thousand times in a nano second: My eyes begin to see clearly: it is the only way I am sure of what I have seen.

My four plus decades photographing in New York City has given me an opportunity to witness the undiscovered: It is one of the greatest games that I play with my camera’s eyes: To walk a mile further: To see a bit more than what I am supposed to see.

Sometimes in a plethora of memorable reveries, I hear the Celtic Sanctuary from the movie Braveheart; The two nearly star-crossed lovers began their tryst in the darkness of the night and continue into the daylight of the dawn. My photographs begin in the darkness of my mind, and come to life in the light of the day.

For every photograph I make there is a mingling of dreams from when I sleep and when I dance.

Corridors are passageways and windows into world’s that few recognize: If you allow the camera to see.

The Architecture of Cities: New York: Part One

August 24, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: New York: Part One

When I was young and younger I remember the hills rolled before my eyes. The cemeteries were framed staid. They memorably crowned the mortals and immortalized.

Maybe it is like being lured out of darkness into the light. You instinctively know that you must pass the dead before you live. My legions of dreams followed me into New York. I drew my breath and challenged my future.

The bus kept movin’, movin’ and rollin’. I was following my nightmares and fantasies. I was not yet a photographer but I was.

I arrived at my New York four corners.

Some people use the the North Star to navigate with. I pulled my dividing compass. I traced my life from the Long Island Expressway graveyards to where I stand in this moment. My fears in that present and later my memories in this present allowed me to reflect that start to almost this finish.

I would like to say my New York started with Fritz Lang’s Blade Runner: Circa 1929. Those cinematic images and a few others have showered me with fantastic imagery. Just about every photograph I thought about thereafter was cinematically influenced.

Woody Allen’s Manhattan: Circa 1979 might be closer to who I became.. The opening credits wished my camera into dream sequences: sort of like visual sorcery opening the doors to the greater possibilities.

I have examined tons of great photographs. So few influenced me. My impressions in my moments propelled me. My own personal cinema drove me. When my mind’s body took off down and across the five New York borough streets and boulevards: I started to find my me.

Then there was the first! Everyone says they remember “their first”. Most remember the revisionism as if in a graphic illustrated version.

The first photograph I made in New York was actually one of thousands. I realized that while I watched movies I was always lost in a dream apart from the film. That is why the larger stories mattered so much: I decided that there was a “still” from almost every movie: Imagine one thousand films: Imagine one thousand dreams of “first” photographs.

So here I stand.

The three “Blade Runner” renditions travel with me as do memories from thousands of other movies. I make a million mental snaps daily. Each visual is a window into my process. It is the process that matters.

Every exposure in your life is connected to your own personal process. Mine as I mentioned is a visual sorcery that elevates my moment. That immersive levitation is what challenges this photographer.

The first time Pope Paul visited New York I realized my photography had the ability to elevate my moment, my camera’s eyes.

Many years later while witnessing the fall of our New York empire circa 2001, I realized a tethered sensibility to the Pope’s visit. Nothing about the above is connected to a religious force. It is merely optical enhancement through a realization that passion matters most.

My architectural photographs in New York and cities of the world are my passion’s reveal. When I die, I will die as a child with my eyes wide open.

“Stay tuned”.

The Architecture of Cities: Tokyo

August 17, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: Tokyo

One twilight evening in Tokyo was particularly enlightening.

I was racing against time to see what I might see before the twilight faded into darkness.

I raced against time. My mind kept rewinding the significance of getting where I needed to be. The city was soon to tear town Kurokawa’s “Nakagin Capsule Tower”. Without any references, I knew where I needed to be standing at the best twilight moment.

I remember a similar story about Kenzo Tange’s “Yoyogi National Gymnasium”.

It is not that another photographer might make the photograph needed to be made. It was that my mind’s camera needed to make the capture. My light was nearing a solemn goodnight. My whole career came pouring forward in flashing imagery like Hieronymus Bosch and Joan Miro delightfully dancing before me.

The passion to capture the light in the moment is a disease. It is an addiction I lovingly embrace. It allows me to breathe.

With one deep Sleep Apnea mannered inhale I raced across roads. My camera bag swung naked to the public. I was not crying. I was tearing with anticipation.

I do not speak Japanese. But I understood the “Capsule” was to soon be razed. I could always find a book or a video. But what is mine in my eyes is mine for eternity.

For maybe fifteen minutes of racing like a “Gorilla in the MIst”, I panicked. Everything soulful, and heartfelt imagery of forty years of photography danced and danced before my eyes. Every image I had ever made sat alongside my tear drops warning me to meet the challenge. ‘Sorry to share this information with you, but it is just how I operate’.

This single picture for better or worse I needed to capture. I needed to be “there”. It felt like a link to my present; A link to my past: a link to everything in my future.

Architecture in Tokyo is not like most cities. The country of Japan enforces their earthquake legislation. If the codes are not met. A building may be brought down. Because a building is iconic, and still does not meet the legislative codes it too will disappear.

I am a photographer of architecture. Every second gazing through my viewfinder is a moment in history: I see not merely history: I see the Samurai, the Emperor, the Yakuza, Akira Kurosawa, Eikoh Hosea, Yukio Mishima and more. I see more than I know as my pace quickens.

Racing along the streets to capture my “Capsule” was not a fantasy, it was a dream come true.

The dream come true is the only reality that lives. I need to make a “snippety snap-snap” or if not, I have failed.

I have missed opportunities for decades. Though I have learned over time that that in itself is part of my inspiration. I trace the moments and places where I have stood. I trace my life back by millenniums. I feel the wind of not merely history but a culture that stands before me,”waiting” for my snap!

The architects Kengo Kuma, Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito, Sanaa, Maki, Isozaki, Tange, and many more have been present in my time spent in Japan. They might not know how their works and presence have influenced my eyes. But how could I arrive in Tokyo and all of Japan without acknowledging their voices in my every frame photographed.

Artists Who Have Died: The Lyrical Brice Marden

August 16, 2023

Artists Who Have Died: The Lyrical Brice Marden

Brice Marden was a grand name in the corridors of the art world. He was an integral swath of fabric connecting the late 20th to early 21st century art world.

He was the in-betweener.

All of the giants before him: Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Cy Twombly, Josef Albers were diamond studded facets that became an amalgamated Brice.

He was like the weight of the anchor for a giant tanker! He challenged the burden: He was the link to generations of giants. He was a force of nature and one of the many to bring forth the past. He was one of the few to forge into the future. These are my eyes talking.

After photographing hundreds of artists’ portraits in their studios you begin to witness the DNA tethered between generations. It is not an exact science, but certainly the heart gets an opinion. In a way it may be the grandest compliment that can be made: Brice Marden was the embodiment of the painters’ gesture. He was the “aha” moment. His work also suggested, “forward we march”.

Art isn’t taught it is learned. I was told that by the artist Robert Motherwell. When he was tasked daily with imitating a particular Cézanne he knew he needed a new way of thinking. He took all of the strategies of a long gone genius and launched himself into his new direction. That is how I think of Brice Marden. I always store these important emotions in my temporal lobe.

I remember walking into what was both a capacious and intimate studio. Brice shook my hands. I could feel the ice in his veins. Not that he was an old cold dude, on the contrary, he pulsed, and lava flowed through his eyes. He was fearless. The camera saw even more.

I don’t believe there is a person, biographer, lover, nor a soul who can fully describe what the artist is/was thinking as he/she stands soulfully in front of the blank canvas. I remember asking deKooning, Jasper, Rauschenberg, Haring and Basquiat what they thought standing naked in front of a naked canvas. To a person I feel they giggled addressing my naïveté. But not Marden. It was almost as if he wanted me to follow him through his past: through his wars. We walked the spacious studio. He asked me a ton of questions about the aforementioned artists. Everyone I photographed also wanted to know about the artists descending in the past and those scaling towards a future. I really think Brice tried to answer the blank canvas question without feeling he had his intellectual privacy invaded. Maybe showing his work was really his answer.

When he invited me to visit him on the Greek island of Hydra, I thought may be he was offering me a window to my blank canvas queries. Though when he described the life on the island, (also second homes to Leonard Cohen and David Gilmour) maybe there was a bit of joshing. I immediately felt there might be a huge task ahead. I thought my name might need (If I was to meet the offer/challenge) to end with a big “S” like Hercules or Aeschylus. I wasn’t sure if the invite was serious or was it something I could muster. I mean, “really” an invite from the knight of a generation?

My portrait archives are a window into my past certainly. But they also inform me of past cultural generations. The archives represent thousands of people who shared something from themselves to me.

In most cases after I completed my session I never saw the subject nor their ghost again. But I do feel the pang of loss. Part of the fabric of my life vanishes and I am left in the light of darkness. Reverie is quite a compelling place to consider another’s life.

The Architecture of Cities: Mexico City

August 10, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: Mexico City

What if you were going

I maintain a holding pattern inside the tailwind behind my Kestrel.

Hovering with anticipation my hawk is set to ambush its prey. She retracts her flaps. We tethered our plumes together. The ambush was successful. We descended to Mexico’s earth as an arrow intended for its bulls eye.

Landing in Mexico City can be a nightmare for me. I find being alone is both a catalog of horrors and unimaginable discoveries of beauty. I have learned to find my way. My mind’s place is a beautifully horrific place to be. I must have a few demons. But it is my world.

When I entered the city, I saw Roberto Bolano’s words and essays dressed in blackened calligraphy imprinted across Mexico’s sidewalks and streets as far as one eye can see. I then hopscotched between the pages of stories I knew: So many Bolano stories real and fictional. I knew new adventures were near to my mind or my imagination.

Bolano’s ghost accompanied me to architect Ricardo Legorreta’s Camino Real Hotel. I photographed the hotel for my Volume 1 “Portraits of the New Architecture” book. Ricardo had been a prince when we met. What better way to start a journey: the mythic literary Latin of language resting in one side of my brain and the power of an architect’s kindness inhabiting the other side of my brain. I began my march.

Finding a photograph is about deploying my fundamental approach to every moment: zoom in to decide what to utilize and what to eliminate: Zoom out to determine what needs to be included. That is the part of the ammunition I will use to locate and shoot the architecture of Fernando Romero, David Chipperfield and more.

Every time I land in Mexico I always try and honor my stay with the memory of the opening credits to the Malcolm Lowry/John Huston movie; Under the Volcano. The “Day of the Dead” skeletal dancing shadows filmed for the movie is mesmerizing beautiful. This particular story begins on “The Day of the Dead”.

I will walk day and night to find the purpose and the angle to celebrate my visuals.

My first stop is to come face to face with Fernando Romero’s designed Soumaya Museum. Supposedly it is a bit controversial. But upon laying my eyes on it, my camera salivated. It was the perfect combination of material and shape to address.

I am not a critic. I am not a critic to identify where and what category defines the piece. I am only here to make something that will find a home in my “Portraits of the New Architecture” Volume 2.

Sometimes I feel not like Cartier-Bresson capturing the moment, but instead I feel like Ansel Adams.

There is a moment in so many of Adams’ pictures where if he didn’t press the shutter release he would have failed. Failing is never in a photographer’s vocabulary. But the realization that there was a better moment to fire your camera is always there. It is just not what a psychologists can rip from the photographer’s mind.

The shapes, shadows, materials, footprint, geographical location and colors always matter. But the personality of the light is king. The light doesn’t speak to everyone: But maybe a photographer can hear when the light matters?

Standing in front of Soumaya I stretched the limits of my body. I raced left and right. I pondered. I stood and let my mind fly. I looked in every direction until: I accidentally? Inadvertently? looked across the plaza down this particular road. It was so very colorfully quiet: so many loud shadows and shapes. I searched for an explanation; In time, Emily Dickinson would eventually come to mind:

“This quiet Dust, was Gentlemen and

Ladies,

And Lads and Girls;

Was laughter and ability and sighing,

And frocks and curls.”

I think that is what I saw.

How a moment is trumpeted for your ears and eyes will always be a mystery: Without a warning or another indication I turned and found my picture. I think that is what I know.

Today the the one clear thought comes to mind: I have looked at this image for years. The moment became more than a snap. I have rummaged thought my brains intricacies for a bit. I realized this/my Soumaya is a twenty-first century homage to Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World”. I think this is what I see; so I share.

My day needed some reward not for the image, but to celebrate an exhausting journey among so many historical and cultural thoughts, I settled on a place for lunch. I remember the second floor.

To this day I cannot remember the name of the place. I just remember the cold beer. I put the bottle to my forehead and spotted a window looking out to where I just came from shooting.

I remember the next moment: It was a sighting I had not anticipated. Almost as if a brick and mortar structure could wink; There stood Museo Jumex. This was my second agenda, to find David Chipperfield’s design. Yes, there it stood waiting. I kept asking myself if this was the best shot? But it didn’t matter. This was my second Ansel Adams in one hour. As Ansel would, as my mentor Julius Shulman would, I made a snippety-snap-snap.

Later that day and the next, I came back to both buildings to see if what I saw was all I needed. Yes, I made some more pics of both: It is sort of the obligation if possible to shoot more than you need. I realized I was finished two days prior.

Now I could dance with the skeletal shadows that welcomed me days before. Then I could sit with my Bolano ghost in tow and talk about anything he wished me to listen to.

I did have more to accomplish:

I needed to have a serendipitous moment running into Sir Norman Foster. I needed to revisit buildings I had previously photographed: Destinations for food and enjoyment.

I needed to crisscross the city for the premier Sangrita. I needed to revisit Kahlo, Rivera, Bravo and and happen upon somethings new.

Mexico is a city that welcomes the eyes. Yes every adventure is about acclimating the eyes to new light, new culture and more.

It is impossible to share youth defined: But it is what I come back to for every camera adventure: I make photographs and travel to remember the first “aha” moment: To recall my youth and live tomorrow.

The Architecture of Cities: Washington, D.C.

August 03, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: Washington, D.C.

I have walked through the corridors of modern American history. The moments are like the silent cinema. The mouths move quite quickly. The voices are quite quiet. There are animated pauses. The chronology of our time matters less as time goes by. The silent power of Washington, D.C. whispers: “Listen”.

Photographers from history like Mathew Brady, Edward Curtis pleaded for the powers of D.C. to support their endeavors. They merely wanted to do in their time what I have spent decades doing: Recording components of our lives before it all vanishes: Some things have to be remembered.

I, at one time focused my camera on the Lincoln Memorial: Lincoln’s gaze in any light emboldens us. The contralto Marian Anderson once stood with arms widening. She gave us “My Country, ‘tis of Thee”.

Imagine tearing up to the anthem: One song, one statue and I realized I was meant to see history in one frame: Some say that a great voice aspires to ascend to the skies above: I think a great voice cascades down from the gods to us mere mortals. When the gods have spoken, a photographer should leave well enough alone. I nodded to Lincoln and celebrated Marian.

I put words in photos and photos in words.

This Washington, D.C. always makes me feel like I am parading naked through America’s most intimate secrets: I have never felt alone in this city because I am accompanied by voices; History’s voices.

When I have walked the six or so miles along Pennsylvania Ave, I always dream about all of my dreams: The stripping Congressman with the real life stripper: The famous Ted Kennedy signing my presidential campaign poster. The other Senator who ran for president escorting me to the museum hosting Paul Gauguin’s retrospective: My afternoon photographing a soon to be president: The snipers that held the city captive and protected the secrets after 9/11: The Museum Directors’ and curators who hosted me during other photography moments: Sitting with my mother at the W Hotel as an ex president elevated in a helicopter :destination unknown: The Blues vocalist who made Blues Alley my private sanctuary.

So many intimate historical moments for my eyes. It reminded me of a blind man telling me that the only way to really see is to be blind. I am always blinded by the events in my life, until I am here with you: Then there is this great moment of clarity that seems to whisper: “look”.

My good fortune in my photography life is that I am always on an imaginary transport: I am taken to a thousand fragments of the planet through the notion that there is something new to see: For me it is the science, math and art of architecture.

My mind travels faster than the speed of light. But the heart of the matter pauses with every single frame: My moment living with our built environment:architecture

The Architecture of Cities: Miami

July 27, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: Miami

If you don’t listen to the music you can’t see

When you march into Miami everything begins with the “O’s”, castanets, brass and percussions.

Boris Pasternak would not have written Dr. Zhivago if he was living in Miami.

The first time I saw Miami was at the Pantages Movie Theater in Hollywood California. I imagined I was James Bond in the movie Goldfinger. The 007 dove into Hotel Fontainebleau pool. I was for those seconds, James Bond and Sean Connery. Years later I entered the Miami I now know as the city of “O’s” and more.

When you enter Miami from the sea, the air, or across the plain landscape, you must hear the music:

The “O’s” are Tito, Paquito, Barretto, Chucho, Arturo, Gato and more. The sounds blaring the brass, castanets and percussions are the soul of the city. They are not merely the “Mambo Kings”, “Fania All-Stars” or passages from Oscar Hijuelos: They are the sounds of nations who migrated to a place some call heaven.

A greater diversity of communities reign in Los Angeles and New York. But sounds from the atlas’s Africa, South America and the Caribbean Islands reign in Miami.

In Miami I have felt God’s wrath in Celsius and Fahrenheit. Some may use the expression “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” to explain the scary truth: Miami as Buster Poindexter may sing is Hot Hot Hot.

I try and hide in the unbearably hot shadows. The spectral of heat induced colors reminds of the bright Alabama Gee’s Bend quilt colors.

There is no escape and no refuge until I allow my imagination to travel down the rabbit hole. If I can hear the music, I can dance with my “O’s”. My toes will wear castanets. My soul will hear the music’s passion. If you don’t listen to the music, you can’t see.

Now that I am emotionally thoroughly invested in the Latin sounds, I can make my way to the “A’s”.

Architects and Architecture have transformed Miami from a town that whispers among the shadows of Art Deco and other less modern designs to a hotbed of visual ideas. Miami is shocked with blinding white and glistening glass. A hunter might see splashes of red or yellow among the new developments. I just feel the trumpets brass filling the air with bright whites.

Zaha Hadid unfinished at the time but still striking

The famous: Gehry, Hadid, Calatrava, Herzog and De Meuron, Grimshaw, Koolhaas, Foster and Bjarke have gifted the city a ton of new designs: Sort of a point and counterpoint with the likes of Morris Lapidus and more.

While on a commission I am compelled to have my camera engage the past, present and future. I grab the eyes of the new age architects. I grab the eyes of the of architects from another age. The camera wants to remember the city as you might remember your paternal/maternal past: The way you envision your offspring to spring forward.

The heat sears my skin. I must be one of those “Mad Dogs”. I need to record my own history as I record the history of cities: I shoot until I drop.

There are only so many calendar years in a persons’ life span. If I can make believe that I can see Miami while I can hear the “O’s” and the soft sounds of Sade, I might make a bit of magic in this city.

The Architecture of Cities: London

July 20, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: London

My camera enters every new city accompanied by an apocalyptic scream. I have this idea that there are a thousand ways to make a single photograph. But only one idea can successfully embrace ever-growing exponential components of what should live in a single frame.

I have referenced all twenty volumes of the the original OED’s (Oxford English Dictionary) to hopefully discover an explanation on how to encompass an entire city in a single film frame. Failing miserably makes me take a bigger bite of my Rice Krispies.

I am well aware that my ideas may sound delusional. I engage my dreamscapes almost like a metaphorical cane, “a lean on”. This honesty stuff is for the birds: but I imagine it is better to share the odd truths than not. I see the world in three-dimensional perspectives accompanied by an optical freeze-frame. How else could I measure what I need to photograph. How else could I interpret space and light without help from forces that I embrace daily.

I imagine every photograph I consider is linked to Isaac Newton’s “Nature of White Light”. How else can I see what to do if I am not feeling the spectral of the “White Light’s” seven colors while my camera swings deliriously around my imaginary maypole.

Where am I to stand if I cannot imagine the first brick brought to rebuild Dresden from the WW11 allied firestorm. I repeat this mantra often: one must start from the nakedness of ruins.

Where am I going to allow my mind to drift if I am not sometimes

accompanied by the literary visuals from the sci-fi likes of Ray Bradbury and others.

What would I understand about cities if the writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne had not mentored my mind: They drove to the far corners of Los Angeles almost weekly, just to see and know what they needed to know.

Where would I be: My Grandfather stood alongside gangster Bugsy Siegel. The two men stared out over the “Vegas” landscape. The two saw moon craters as far as the eye would allow: They were dreaming about what might be: Bugsy made my Grandfather an offer to build the Las Vegas Flamingo Hotel. My Grandfather could have been killed for turning the gangster down: My grandfather could have been killed if the slightest error in construction occurred. My Grandfather’s favorite word thereafter was “Phew”.

LONDON

I entered London on an assignment to photograph the new architecture. There were certainly pretenders and what ifs: The Wild West with no zoning sheriff’s would be the best way to look at the new London in the rear view mirror.

I knew about Shakespeare‘s wisdom and Thomas De Quincey’s madness. I was in good hands as they hovered and guided me throughout the intricacies that are London.

The same way that every person who might adore Paris, might find Marcel Proust to guide and fill their celluloid dreams.

I decided that if Sir Isaac Newton had met Joan Didion I might have finally discovered how my cities should be photographed: Isaac, Joan and I discovered a way to look that for the first time supported my personal theory: A photographer’s needs are to see a singular object as part of the camera’s capabilities to zoom in and zoom out: All of the spectral that can be seen in London, and all of the architectural landscape that is London, waited for me.

London became my playground for discovery: All the information that a a person can consume lives inside a camera housing. (I certainly am not smoking the hard stuff with the likes of Einstein and Oppenheimer).

Then you add Newton’s “White Light. Then you speak to all of Bradbury’s contemporaries past and present. You begin to feel the horrors and fallout of Dresden. You begin to realize that all photographs have a starting point: You start the way my grandfather may have: “I have a desert, what shall I make of it”. London was my desert, and then I had to see it.

I photographed more than one-hundred buildings: Koolhaas, Hadid, Grimshaw, Moussavi, Levete, Toomey, Alsop, Foster, Rogers, 6a, Wilkenson Eyre, Adjaye,Heatherwick, Chipperfield, Caruso St John, McAslan, Van Berkel, Nouvel and Libeskind to name a few.

I brought all of my cameras and tools of the trade I crisscrossed the city.

I must have introduced myself to 50 security guards as they questioned my intentions: you know cameras are scary.

I processed bags of Fuji film. But most importantly I saw an entire city by foot,train, bus and subway.

One of my great professional rewards.

The Architecture of Cities: Seville

July 13, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: Seville

If I were to dream: I would imagine I sat atop a Spanish Imperial Eagle espying from the prevailing Sirocco. Aloft the hot rising currents I felt tethered to the romantic vision of Carmen: Georges Bizet’s Carmen.

If I were to dream: I would imagine that more than two thousand years ago I marched alongside the bespoken Seville founder and powerful mythic Hercules.

If I were to dream: I would imagine my myth: A younger version of me trying to kiss an ethereal beauty who has not yet lived in any time but in our dreams.

My mind enters the point of no return: My eyes dream within my heart.

I entered Seville like I was leading an army of like minded souls searching for the beauty that was my Carmen. I would trace her footsteps. All the while I would be making a discovery about myself.

Every time I lift my camera I dream within my reality. My camera lives within my two stories.

I use all of my mental faculties as a navigation system to pass through Sevilles’ urban and rural landscapes. I discover paths that I can follow. My agenda becomes something larger than a mere photograph. I create reasons to get through a known and unknown set of discoveries.

Bizet’s Carmen is a precious love story. As I followed every shard of light, curious street and building my camera began to understand Seville’s history.

A frenzy and an adrenaline rush snaked through my mind and body. Led Zeppelin - Going To California (Official Audio)YouTube · Led Zeppelin3 minutes, 33 secondsNov 27, 2021 The song began to flood my acoustical tunnels. I was in a panic to see what I needed to see. I was shielding my body from the most surreal temperatures and spectral presence: If one could possibly imagine the Hiroshima atomic bomb victims radiant shadows bleached atop the city’s cement and stone remains: Yes this heat was my enemy. I sheltered from the sun for hours every day. To this very moment the memory of the heat leaves me weak.

After awhile I found clarity in the heat. I felt the rhythm that might be a better acoustical companion.

Miles Davis’ “Sketches of Spain”, Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain (1960) (Full Album)YouTube · Jazz Time with Jarvis X41 minutes, 39 secondsFeb 18, 2018

Miles, a wee bit of Flamenco and architecture: Following all of my reverie I found my gait. I started with what I understood was to be inside the Cathedral de Sevilla: The Casa Carnal. If I could find the legacy of Carmen there, I could find some peace of mind.

But then I moved with Miles! I Crossed the shadows of the Cathedral. I scanned left and right for my Carmen. Only the traces, of shadows that may be hers were slightly seen. So I moved some more to the (Bull Ring) “Plaza de toros de la Real Maestranza de Caballeria de Sevilla”. I imagined sitting with Hemingway (not knowing if he had been there or not). I still wanted to dream a bit; I walked through Santa Cruz (the Old Jewish Quarter). I found myself lost at night: One cannot always feel lost with the company of food and a wee drink or two.

I found the next engagement: The uplifting contemporary designs from the 1992 Design Expo: The new Police Station: The Court House and many more alluring beauties.

My spirits were brighter; My pictures were brighter.

I finally sat down one afternoon in the shade with Carmen novelist, Prosper Mérimée, and Carmen composer, Georges Bizet. We talked about the myth and the frenzy that one woman may cause when you chase her through this beautiful city.

I dream everytime I place my eyes up to the view finder

I dream while reality stands before me

It is the only way I know how to see

I never found my Carmen, but I saw traces of so much more.

Baseball: For the Love of the Game: The 300 hitter and Sweeping Veronica

July 06, 2023

Baseball: For the Love of the Game: The 300 hitter and Sweeping Veronica

I dream about my dreams

When I arrived at Dodger Stadium, there were 50,000 fans cheering my entrance. I imagined I was Spartacus entering the Capua amphitheater. My dreams enabled me to conquer my anxieties. The 1963 World Series was about to begin. I love Baseball. I was/am a mighty fan. I needed to breathe.

I dreamed while I watched the game. I dreamed could see the rotation of the baseball as it left Sandy Koufax’s hand until it landed into Johnny Roseboro’s catcher’s mitt. I saw the batter swing and the fielders shift in three dimensional Stop-Action. My mind was playing one game as I watched the real game with the Dodgers: I was in my own bit of heaven.

I hated to be disturbed during the game. I merely wanted to eat my peanuts and drink a bit of root beer. Sometimes there was this old lady sitting nearby. She was dressed in a wool suit with a hat. She wore a ton of lipstick but always wore this huge smile. She was always making noises for her favorite Dodger. I was angry that someone was disturbing my concentration.

It didn’t matter what inning it was, or who was at bat, but this same old woman would stand up when nobody else was standing and screamed out her favorite player’s name; “Frank”.

Why the big galoot Frank Howard was her favorite was something I will never know: I never asked.

The only reason I can imagine was that when he hit a home run he hit towering shots over the stadium. (Frank Howard mostly struck out. When the Dodgers traded him to the Washington Senators he learned to hit a wee bit better under the tutelage of Baseball great,Ted Williams.)

The atmosphere at the stadium was festive and loud. But then there was still the old lady.

I would glance towards the woman from time to time. I always realized how important she was to me. But I think her “stuff” was the “right stuff” for the game as well. When I saw Robert Redford’s “The Natural”.

I suddenly realized that if you removed about 30 years from the old woman, she could become the Glenn Close character. When the old woman stood and screamed for Frank Howard, my eyes would imagine the stadium going dark. A ray of backlight illuminated my grandmother like nobody could. She was in her element; She was having the time of her life. I love remembering my Dodger moments.

Sweeping Veronica

Baseball pitchers and batters are like matadors and bulls. The bull charges towards a matador. The clever matador sweeps the cape aside: He executes the Sweeping Veronica. Every time the bull passes the missed cape the frustrated bull returns faster and faster filled with more frustration and less concentration.

The clueless swinging batter gets more frustrated with every missed swing at the pitched ball. Each swing for each pitch becomes more frantic. The clever pitcher(Matador) throws a trick pitch, the batter swings and is merely out. When the bull makes an exhausted final pass a sword knifes between the flustered bulls shoulder blades; We all know what happens next.

Less than 2% of all major leaguers bat a .300 average. The famous and infamous Pete Rose will tell you how sad those statistics are:”You only need to get three hits per ten at bats to average .300.

Baseball is a contact sport: You merely need to meet the ball with your bat. Pitchers are flaming more than 90 miles per hour. That speed from less than 60 feet seems daunting. But why pay a twenty something to be star 300 million$$ if he only hits the ball sometimes: Are the ownerships and fans waiting for modern day Frank Howard to hit the spectacular? No, most baseball players are swinging at butterflies. You need to have a sense of humor to appreciate the successes and pitfalls of the game.

My grandmother had heart palpitations waiting for the big one from Frank Howard. Can you imagine 50,000 fans waiting for one of nine batters to make the big hit?

The baseball needs to be slapped. Slap it to left, or right. Maybe a batter sees thirty or forty eye catching balls to belt out of the park a year when a velocity of ninety miles per hour meets a bat powered by astrutting twenty-two year old. Connecting for a home run is special. When your strength and skills fade why not be able to slap the ball around and play the game for the love of it.

If the league is ready, I would be happy to give 800 players a lesson.

The Architecture of Cities: Paris

June 29, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: Paris

I have been coming of age as recently as today, and as far back as my memory allows.

I remember my first Croque Monsieur at a busy touristy restaurant on Avenue Champs-Élysées. The top slice of bread had two branded corners: the left corner of the crust was an emblazoned postage stamp of the Arc de Triomphe. The right corner of the crust was an emblazoned postage stamp of the Eiffel Tower.

My eyes know no lies. Like a gator’s eyes widening above the swamp’s crest, John Lennon whispered “I Am the Walrus”. For a nano second, I was the Walrus. There doesn’t have to be an explanation when your eyes experience a thunderous wonderment. Just allow your body to rock a bit more until it settles. I was in Paris.

Lonely is a life experience that few allow themselves to say. It is a moment of unfounded desperation. We think we are lonely because we are alone. Both words (lonely, alone) trigger dreams and nightmares. As I write this moment, I feel as if I am dancing a jig. I am levitating above places I have never been: above places that have been profoundly influential.

The only time I was ever lonely in Paris was during this short time in 1986 when I needed to hear spoken English: I was lonely for the words I didn’t need to translate.

I saw a movie marquee advertising Out of Africa. I needed Meryl Streep’s listless romantic English. Oddly I needed an escape from one of the most beautiful cities in the world to Sydney Pollack and David Watkin’s Africa. I knew from the very first frame, that I didn’t need Africa. My eyes merely needed to be somewhere fresh and new for my imagination.

Throughout the movie I imagined hearing an overlay of Miles Davis’s soundtrack:”Elevator to the Gallows”. Miles was made for my Paris. The melding of Meryl’s Africa, and the jazz of Miles’ Paris gave rise to fresh eyes. I walked, danced and raced out of the theater eyes aglow. I knew the night and thereafter it was just me and Paris: the city.

Certainly the thoughts were overtly and emphatically romantic. But what is the point of being creative if you can’t express yourself!

I have visited Paris over many decades. I have heard the passions of the French: La Marseillaise, Serge,Jane, Hallyday, Piaf and Montand. But for a reason that might take volumes to explain, Miles Davis’ “Gallows…” and Roxy Music’s “Avalon” seemed to have accompanied me to every Parisian arrondissement. I don’t ever remember taking a photograph without the two wildly different sounds in my ears. In Paris, their music somehow makes me feel as if each picture I make is a Chagall superimposed atop of a Dali melting clock.

I remember staying one time across from a ballet studio. Every time ballerinas walked out of rehearsals or exercise classes I imagined that the dancers were floating above the rooftops. Paris has that affect on my photography.

Louis Vuitton Store front rue de Bonaparte

I have spent extensive time in Paris photographing architects’ architecture and artists in their studios. The artists: Cesar, Arman, Topor and more awakened my visual sensibilities. The architecture by French Architects; Christian Portzamparc, Odile Decq, Jean Nouvel, Dominique Perrault and more lured me across the entire Parisian metropolis. Along the way I traveled to enviable trysts to see architecture by aliens to France like Oscar Niemeyer, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Frank Gehry and more. It was a privilege to travel and peruse the city with and without agendas.

Oscar Niemeyer Communist Party Headquarters

I have felt an enrichment in Paris that seems to have gone on for a millennium; or merely my

life was interlaced among events that had been a simple “two step” tethered to a million other dance moves.

I know that in Paris, I felt I had been empowered to make photographs: Paris in a way was a beginning. Possibly Paris was my Bethlehem.

If I know one thing, I have been coming of age as recently as today, and as far back as my memory allows.

The Architecture of Cities: Chicago

June 22, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: Chicago

The heart of my architecture of cities series is akin to the tree of life: my eyes trace architecture’s family tree. Ultimately I want to be like Darwin, but an urban botanist seems right. I visit a city, and many times revisit cities with a mission at times to photograph a revitalization of a neighborhood that has been nurtured and stimulated. I am equally a witness to the demise of urban life that dies alone.

Botany is the scientific study of plants, including their physiology, structure, genetics, ecology, distribution, classification, and economic importance. It is the examination of plant life of a particular region, habitat or geological region. Substitute geographical for geological then you will know what my camera sees. Most people assume I am merely glorifying what already exists. But my camera comes with a DNA. It incorporates the knowledge of the past and the present with a peek into a future. Plant life, and urban life celebrate those identities.

I discovered there was a city named Chicago a few years after I was born.

Try to imagine eyes listlessly staring to the ceiling and above to the stars. Imagine the stars dancing within your galaxy of dreams. Imagine your Baseball heroes positioned on nine stars against their adversaries also positioned on opposing nine stars. Then just possibly you might be able to envision this nearly five year old listening with his transistor radio under the sheets to the Los Angeles Dodgers versus the Chicago White Sox World Series.

Six years later the Chicago Cubs, were playing the Los Angeles Dodgers. I watched from the third base side field level, row “r” as the phenomenal Sandy Koufax pitched a “Perfect Game”.

Baseball was my introductory class to geography.

About the same time, I learned that my mother’s side of our family migrated from Chicago to Los Angeles in the 1930’s. Before that the family name had immigrated from an area they called “Beyond the Pale”: Today “The Pale” is part of the embattled Ukrainian region.

Three years later this coming of age teen watched on television as Mayor Richard Daly’s brutal police force pummeled the Democratic convention protestors. From baseball to my mother’s origin and then to a political maelstrom, Chicago became a real life place.

One day a massive avalanche of destruction hit my present hometown of New York.

For about 10 days I suffered the ambulance’s sirens and the notion of death before my eyes. My wife and I fled the tormenting sounds of death and found respite. Yes, Chicago. I remember landing in O’Hare airport. It was almost empty. We felt protected.

There was something about how we felt welcomed by everyone we met. We were from New York and the city was going to protect us. From the first day to the final day of refuge, when we left the restaurant Spiaggia (supposedly President Obama’s favorite) Chicago has remained among my favorite friends.

I have since made a few visits to photograph architecture. My subjects included a building for David Childs from the firm SOM. I also danced for a few days with Jeanne Gang’s Aqua building.

I say danced, because I found numerous two-steps with the light that actually made me laugh and dance. Anytime light is your partner, there can be no down side.

Stanley Tigerman’s Holocaust Memorial in Skokie

I met up with Stanley Tigerman. What a prince among architects he was. I must say that after finding the architect such a joy, his Illinois Holocaust Museum was sadly a beautiful display of what carnage means to any living soul. The heart stands apart from your body and you quietly grieve and think, an architect can in the best way draw the shades on your soul.

Finding my last and lasting days among Chicago’s architecture is a reason to believe in a future, any future.

The Architecture of Cities: Dhaka, Bangladesh

June 15, 2023

Architecture of Cities: Dhaka

I arrived in Dhaka, Bangladesh after nearly six-teen hours in the air. The entire flight from New York, my mind was consumed with “what will I see, what can I see, how will I see”.

I always feel a bit dazed and confused when I deplane. I knew I had only a few hours to collect my thoughts before my lecture. The lecture was about my architectural photography and the world of architects I had photographed.

I wanted to be calm and informative for my lecture. But I was coming out of my skin to see what I could see in Bangladesh. I was planning a camera assault on Dhaka. I had lots to prepare for, lots to do.

When I finally hit the Dhaka streets I felt like Disney’s Steamboat Willie. I felt like I was leading a parade of 49,000 naked centipedes with 9,800,000 legs in tow. Dhaka’s population may be 23 million, but I felt at least half of the city’s eyes were on me.

I needed to fly. There was not a street that I could ignore. I just had to see everything. I am a discretionary photographer. Just because something is there, it does not necessarily qualify for a snap. It is the way I have engaged architecture in cities from my very first point and shoot to my Minox spy camera and everything that followed.

Interior of of National Assembly Building by Louis Kahn Dhaka

I became obsessed with checking off my wish list. No, no, no I am not psychoanalyzing myself. Photography is a heart and soul game; but it is also a numbers game. When I first used my Minox, I became obsessed with numbers: if you cannot grasp the understanding of numbers, you cannot become a photographer: Aperture marries shutter speed and engages f-stop: then a picture is made. Without the complete comprehension of the aforementioned formula there is no history of photography. Photography is an art, but it is also science and math. Sometimes I feel like I am nearing the end of the line, but that does not stop me from organizing my imagery with a touch Merlin’s potion of heart, soul and numbers.

Dhaka, Bangladesh, was a chance for me to witness a city amidst an incredible economic growth, and come to terms with A sad but soulful poverty ladened land. I wondered if my lens could trace the area’s history back a thousand years. What could I see that was modern; what could I see that was a stand alone historical artifact or an example of mankind’s origins. I might have been hoping and dreaming, but what fun that is for me.

detail National Assembly building Louis Kahn

I was hoping to see history as it had never been seen before. I might boldly exaggerate: but that is what partly motivates my mind and stimulates my eyes: Dhaka has/had secrets. Why not try to capture all that stands before you. Maybe I would find the first Noah’s Ark, not the one from the Bible!

How ridiculous the above may sound. But then, Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Building stood before me. Then the National Martyr’s Memorial stood before me. Then I was on the streets at dawn and dusk. Then I felt myself shake a bit. Then I was alone with my thoughts. Then I realized something spectacular had happened to me: every frame the camera saw stopped my heart and concurrently set my electrolytes afire.

There could have been so much more to see. But my camera cannot capture a nation in a nano second.

I was introduced to so many things; sadly I was not aware of the proper way to eat with your hands; If you had seen the expression on the 49,000 centipedes you might have laughed at my 50,000 shades of red.

The Architecture of Cities: LA Art World And The Giacometti Face

June 08, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: LA Art World And The Giacometti Face

When I landed in Los Angeles I felt the tectonic shift. It felt like the first one from four billion years ago, so they say.

Los Angeles Mulholland Drive is one of those curious roads: It begins here and ends there. If you are not familiar: think of a road atop a ridge of a mountain heading west emptying into the Pacific Ocean. Then imagine that same road heading east. In the opposite direction it will connect people in the low valley of San Fernando to parts known and unknown in Hollywood. You don’t have to understand Los Angeles to understand this scenario: You merely have to suspend your disbelief.

Valley kids from straightaway drags to curvy doomed turns versus West Side kids in poppas’ bought cars challenged each other. Engines revved with no intention of racing: Teenagers and a few twenty something thought the whole city was following their tracks. It is said that some girls bought into it. Throngs were waiting for the mythic Hollywood star Steve McQueen to arrive and contest the drag youngsters around Mullholland curves.

The kids down in the flats waited for a sign: some put their ear to the ground: others looked to the sky watching for a head to fly.

The Mulholland habitués Nicholson, Brando, Beatty and more sat around their terraced hillside home spreads listening for the racing action to begin. There might have been some smoke, a drink or something to pop down their throats to enhance the excitement.

Everyone’s mind was in sync: what was McQueen thinking? Did he really need to impress the locals? Was the need for adoration and fanfare what the superstar actor needed.

The LA mentioned above was one tenth of one infinitesimal part of Los Angeles. It sort of reminds me of secrets people tell about their past: it wasn’t my past, but one of those things you hear or see. The past is something that you have subconsciously forgotten or you are reminded of episodes as one might be reminded of the movie stars: They die and you recall the movies they were in and where you were in the year you watched on television or at the Pantages. Like a cartoon caption a little forgotten story pops up. The memory floodgates open up.

#ThomMayne #CaltransDistrict7 #Morphosis

I realize I have jumped from that little visual about LA on Mulholland to a greater canvas: I had been photographing hundreds of people in a stretch of time: The art world and the architecture world of an entire city. Everyone who was famous for being famous and other great personalities posed for my Pentax. From Pasadena to Malibu with Beverly Hills, Venice and Hollywood in between. It seems like a bit of folk lore now.

I met the art dealer everyone hated and 29 more. I met the museum directors: They were kings of a funny cliquish circle. I met the collectors who weren’t sure of the name of certain artists they collected.Yes, I photographed hundreds: Artists, Architects, Hollywood agents, Movie Directors, Real Estate tycoons and. But most importantly I saw the city that I left behind.There was not a single day of my visual life that I don’t stare into the abyss with my eyes praying for traces of history: I saw traces of my history and the history of an expanding metropolis.

The entire story above was intended to be an exhibition that celebrated the culture of a city. The exhibition never happened. It is too complicated to explain the power play among the monied. But I became a better photographer: practice makes perfect.

I tried to understand my efforts. I tried to understand the power play. I tried to understand the hundreds of miles I traveled to make a bit of history.

#HowardHughes #SpruceGoose Where he brought the goose to

I guess I could sum up my experiences this way: I photographed a very important art collector:

I made in my mind a beautiful portrait. As I do, I returned to the collector’s home to present my work. The collector said this was the most beautiful portrait. Then the collector asked me to follow into another room. The collector pointed to this drawing. The collector said there is one problem with this magnificent portrait you made: I look like this magnificent drawing made by Giacometti. The Giacometti art is great as is your photograph: But I wouldn’t want anyone to see me look like a Giacometti.

In a small way it didn’t matter. I loved my portrait moments. I loved rediscovering my Los Angeles and this new Los Angeles that saw itself as the new cultural frontier. That is not a commentary. It is what Hollywood agents and new and old money invented for themselves.

I loved every photography moment in Los Angeles. Everyone gossiped and styled for my shoots: Even the artists.

I went to lunches, I had drinks, I went to dinners:I was social.

Everyone was from a different planet.

The Architecture of Cities: Rotterdam, The Passion for the Whale

June 01, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: Rotterdam, The Passion for the Whale

For decades as I look through the rear view mirror I realize that whales have been swimming around in my brain for quite sometime.

The first time I saw a whale, I was six years old. I was at the beach positioned next to P.O.P (Pacific Ocean Park) in Santa Monica. A Blue Whale was beached: Cetacean Stranding: the phenomenon is commonly referred to. I was with my mother and an assorted mass of relatives.

It is a bit disconcerting that one of the greatest of great mammals was beached next to my skin and yet this tiny tot was the only one who remembered such an episode. Then again maybe it is true what some say: fiction is the greatest truth.

Historically, whales represent mythical experiences: Melville’s Ahab chasing the “Great White: The masterful German artist Albrecht Durer crossing a veritable Europe to draw a stranded Cetacean: and me, a photographer living life like Charlton Heston’s Ben-Hur with chariot harnessed horses raging against envious enemies as I stood naked atop two blue whales. My lore resides atop the seven seas instead of a meager Colosseum.

Both Ahab and Durer would have stripped naked as well if it meant mastering their conquests as I have tried. Ahab’s death was equally victorious and decidedly torturous: Durer almost dies questing a glimpse of the whale ashore from sea: I merely dream (with a ton of camera weight in tow) that one day my photography conquests matches my hallucinatory aspirations at sea.

My pre-dawn train pulled into Rotterdam train station. My mind was accompanied by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s stirring soundtrack to Ryuichi Sakamoto - Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence - YouTube “Merry Christmas Mr.Lawrence”. It was my anthem to see by as my mission began. Aspirations begin to mingle about: they can be larger than life itself.

I felt something in the moment: There was a lilt in my voice, some flight in my gait, and some delicious visual observations in my gaze.

Central Station By Architect by Team Sand MVSA and WEST 8

My reason to be in Rotterdam was to photograph the firm MVRDV led by Winy Maas. Then I would photograph their BOOK MOUNTAIN, a fabulously designed library just outside Rotterdam in Spijkenisse. Once that mission was accomplished I could take on the city of Rotterdam.

Rotterdam in someways is a smaller version of New York City. I say that as a compliment: It is a bit of a carnival. There is so much to see and do. There is a congestion of sorts, but if you know how to get around you feel like you can walk the entire city. Rotterdam has the feeling that around any corner an architectural delight will appear: The Central Station is easily the boldest exterior I have seen. The Market Hall feels like a whale has come ashore right in the middle of the city. The famous architect REM Koolhaas looms everywhere you look but so does the firm MVRDV.

Then you have the delights of the Cube Houses by Piet Blom: the Old Harbor which has been more infiltrated than gentrified by the new skyscrapers.

By night or day there may be evil lurking. But like any great city, you feel as if the city is yours to own, to explore: eat, drink, and…

The city’s history dates back more than eight-hundred years. The history is worth volumes of considerations and volumes of historical biographies. I am in and out of cities faster than a hummingbird can draw nectar. I come away with a mere treat, an impression. The ghosts of Rotterdam toiled along my side for miles. The stories they have shared, the admirable visual directions they have shared, are embedded in my archives and in my mind for a lifetime.

The Architecture of Cities: Berlin in 30 Seconds

May 25, 2023

The Architecture of Cities: Berlin in 30 Seconds

“Merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream”.

The time was about 10:pm. I was sitting in the Berlin overnight train. I cannot possibly remember where I was headed: I do remember the ride was going to be long. I thought this was a good idea. I thought to see the morning sun rise the next day would be exciting. The idea was not my best: But somehow it still felt genius; Since I never sleep on trains or planes, I could rewind the extraordinary time in Berlin.

I was dropped at the station by a Mercedes Benz corporate honcho. We had just spent the past 2-3 hours talking about how he was responsible for choosing Architect Ben Van Berkel for the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart. It was an uneasy chat: I was shooting his portrait for my book; But the conversation was heartily monitored by a communication assistant.

I made the corporate honcho look very handsome. He offered to drive me to the train station so I would not miss my train. I thanked him for sitting for my camera: He said, “I will see you again in New York. He became my best friend. I never saw him again.

Before I arrived at the corporate offices, I had spent an extraordinary day. Before the portrait session, I remember standing in the middle of the Potsdamer Platz. The legendary light pipes glowed with the setting sun. My moments were waning. I knew I could not own Berlin that day.

But standing in the Potsdamer Platz and looking as they say in Westerns “look yonder”; I saw a huge gathering outside the Berlin Film Festival. So many beautiful people posing for pictures. I almost pulled out my camera. But I am dedicated to my photography: I had needed to make like Secretariat trotting, to make my Mercedes portrait session.

But before the Potsdamer Platz. And the cinema festival and the Mercedes honcho,

I had rendezvoused with the German Chancellery designed by Charlotte Frank. In fact every walking moment was a rendezvous with architectural destiny. How was I going to make it to Hans Scharoun’s Berlin Philarmonic? Was I going to make it on time to Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum memory of the dead. Should I go there first? Or commune with Peter Eisenman’s funeral procession among the dead at his Holocaust Memorial?

I had decisions to make. I was attempting to absorb eight hundred years of existence in “30 seconds”.

I love to run and I was running. No time to “trot”. “Run” said the gods. It is a race against time: I run as the intellectual amphetamines kick in. Not a single second was wasted or disappointing.

Before any captures of the above, my camera framed Mies Van der Rohe’s Neue National Galerie. But I had more running before that.

I stood completely alone with the Brandenburg Gate. Before that my Nietzschean eyes espied the DZ Bank Building. Who would miss Frank Gehry’s (lets call it a skylight hovering over a giant fish) beautiful interior design elements.

I had a single meal in Berlin: Breakfast with Norman Foster’s beautiful glass domed Reichstag.

If I were to calculate the walking distance with camera bags in tow, I would make myself faint. But it would not make a difference? To amass maybe 50 Km’s in a day is about the most aesthetic cultural attention I am qualified for.

My story really begins when I land in Berlin from Porto and Lisbon Portugal.

It is the mind that matters. Or are the eyes more important?

I do know that the entire time on the plane I was rubbing my hands together with excited anticipation. I had a thousand questions to ask: To ask Germany, to ask Berliners. I wasn’t seeking answers, I was seeking an experience.

If I could tap into the cultural young ghosts of Billy Wilder, Leni Riefenstahl, Fritz Lang, Werner Herzog, Fassbinder and more, I might end up with more questions and fewer answers. But that is what experiences are all about. I merely wanted my camera to zoom in and zoom out: I wanted my lens to absorb a history.

The world will fade away before my eyes one day. I want it all before that day comes: My camera needs to see it.