Architecture of Cities: One Building at a Time

My camera merely dreams:

A frozen pulse as if in mid-pen motion: Photographer Bill Brandt snaps poet Robert Graves: A satisfying cacophonic camera shutter freeze-frame is heard: Four imminently patient tickled ivories touch me as Keith Jarrett’s “Köln Concert” plays: Director Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning rolls across the screen: The birthing of portentous evil is seen atop aqua blue night shaded curvy rolling hills: Writer Geoffrey Dyer’s “But Beautiful” musicians Duke Ellington and Harry Carney drive through the blackness of the night: My vision quest may be part music quest, part light quest for something not yet known: Maybe like a strip-naked vibrato, dark contoured intricacies heard ahead: Prophecies appear: There are signals of better light, near:

Ruminating through history encourages me to engage foreign lightscapes across urban and rural destinations: The romance of missions ahead reminds me of anticipated treasures filled with hope: They are what soothe my sleeps and frighten me awake.

In every city I visit, I wonder if one city is enough: I am continually accompanied by a “Breathless” vibe. Imagine actor Belmondo; Artist Caravaggio; Cartoon character (Taz)Tasmanian Devil; And Melville’s Ahab all shrink wrapped together as a single piercing voice: I hear far and near passions breathing.

Continents, countries, and cities my camera has seen:

Ernest Hemingway’s sitings appear: Hills like white elephants afar could easily or seemingly be my template for every building and cityscape I have seen or might. Every day I imagine a magicians wand hovering above my image to make: One blink and the event vanishes: Fleeting  images designed by light is an extraordinary sense of my life: I can blink one thousand times and see the building in front of me a million different ways and see divinely, canvases of urban and rural moments: Vanishing white elephants may infer my own living “Old Man in the Sea”: The white elephants may be my Melville white whale: Breathlessness days are my common denominator:

The imminent fleeting disappearance of my light pales me: My light barely remains before the camera’s f-stop shakes my aperture for the capture: Light is a rewarding selfish fleeting companion: Close your eyes once and it is gone: “Hurry” my mere camera shrieks loudly: I must always capture what appears as white elephants or another imaginary capture.

Voices ring:

Architects Thom Mayne, David Childs, Bernard Tschumi and Charles Gwathmey, ring my phone: All are known across the architectural curriculum: Their place in history is not mine: Their voices heard on my iPhone audio become considerations and possibly proclamations for where and why my camera should focus: They as in an a cappella of visual ideas offered intuitive advice: My eyes were momentarily flooded with their ideas: Their visions merged into mine: The moments reminded of  archaeologists softly navigating like a brain surgeon: The soft lift of  the skull for observation; Like the archaeologist sifting through a layer of soil many times more fragile than a finite sprinkle of salt on our diet: If I apply the gentle nudging, siphoning through ideas of others I just might discover the moment- the architects design: The results sometimes fail to share what I see: Often I imagine I hear “Eureka” bellowed  between my interlocking ears: Voices of suggestions sometimes may be what the camera needed.

The photographer’s art of fact and fiction is often about utilizing space and time: Astrophysicists

live in some respect by a similar notion: They ask us to imagine beyond the stars: They like photographers use math and science to determine an inevitable truth: We all must assume a leap of faith that the truth is before our eyes: The photograph and stars are just right there: Look closely.

The light we see and the light not seen illuminate our stories:

My photography reminds me of the movie title “La Grande Vadrouille” (a grand stroll)-The life with camera in tow: Maybe everything I share is akin to Duke Ellington’s confession that he does not play piano, but is just dreaming; Maybe I have not made thousands of pictures, I am merely dreaming.