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Architecture of Cities: Mapping Beauty XXVIII

Architect: Oscar Niemeyer: Los Angeles 1963.

I have loved three paintings in my life: I have admired many more: The three paintings I have loved framed my photographic ideas subliminally- – truthful fictions followed: Arnold Böcklin’s first Isle of the Dead  introduced my eyes (along with the two other paintings/artists) to what I needed my photography to appear like: The three paintings were like realizing for the first time that life starts as an embryo: The three paintings became my DNA before I became aware of what I wanted not merely from photography- – but from the life of a photographer: The life of a photographer was to be how and where I made photographs: Where and why I traveled: The collective immersion of place and time: The pragmatism and adventurism that I wanted to have seen in celluloid: The invention of character in what the camera saw.

Every day became a dream sequence almost like a seance: I Imagined traveling the lost Apacheria of the Apache Indians: I Imagined standing upright to the sounds of the Tate /Manson Los Angeles nightmare: I Imagined the first sight of Vesuvius’ lava flow upon Pompeii: Yes, if you will allow yourself to imagine somewhere before you were here or there- -reality raises its beautiful head. Dangerous thoroughly joyful experiences become visual comfort:

Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright: Carmel, California.

The visual comfort that I first recognized in Böcklins’ Isle of the Dead was the necessary technique of imagery I needed to aspire towards: I tried to marry the technical and the journey: It would be like a diary of the Monarch Butterflies migration: If I only admired the wings in motion I could write one million words about the urgency of flight the pleasures of destinations and the experiences of captures: I wanted to join in the flight: I wanted to be a part of the phenomenon that is referred to as a kaleidoscope and be apart of the flutter.

For decades I didn’t merely release my camera’s shutter apparatus- -I was somewhere> That somewhere always reminded me of Böcklin’s “…Dead”. The romance and the journey was certainly more important than the capture- -until the reverse became the greater truth.

All the homes I have seen through the wide and narrow aperture’s has become my own personal romance novel: A story resides in the not the just captured moments: But a place that was us before now.

Architect: Charles Gwathmey: Malibu California.

Alone in my mind is where I am never alone: It is why the three paintings ride with me: There is no fabrication in this set of concepts: It is equal to Melville’s Ahab, or Albrecht Dürer’s whale: There is a quest for reality: There is no time to die in imaginations: It is a quest to capture in flight a lifetime of experiences: Spend a minute in a torrent of Celtic Myths: Listen to the pleasures of Homer’s Sirens: Stand toe to toe with Rabelais’s Gargantua: I am alone in my mind with Böcklin’s “…Dead” yet my reality is seen framing a design by Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ricardo Bofil, Philip Johnson and more than one-hundred thousand real moments. I stand straddled across one thousand cities just listening for the conversations among the ghosts who were here before now.

Architect: Ricardo Bofill: Barcelona, Spain.

Richard Schulman is a photographer and writer. His books include Portraits of the New Architecture and Oxymoron & Pleonasmus. He lives in New York City.

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