CounterPunch+ Exclusives

CounterPunch+ Exclusives

Architecture of Cities: Mapping Beauty XXV

Architects: Tsao & McKown: 15 William: aka William Beaver House.

Elixirs have always floated gravity free in and above celluloid dreams. A flurry of names have danced with eternity- -and painted with light: Maybe ten-million stand – – stand and pose atop a merry-go-round inhabited by photography’s nearly three-centuries: Ten-Million names read like a reckoning and equally a musical coda: We remember the first creative glimpse: The first visual seduction: A canister of film- – a tray of dye transfer developer: I navigate ahead. Visual history’s malleable poseurs stand at attention ready to be utilized for desirous inventions: The moment’s moment.

I have waited decades to realize nothing matters more than waking to consciousness: Becoming aware of imaginary reveals: I hold in each hand deferentially one part creamsicle, one part dreamsicle: The thrill of my will the will of a thrill: A person’s life nests as a camera in Japanese, Swiss, German mechanisms- – cameras of all formats inducing delirium in every dreamer.

Detail of the Beaux-Arts Hotel Seville, 1904. Architect Harry Allan Jacobs.

More than a few Gutenbergs hold the secrets: The volumes borrow your eyes to explain the camera’s shutters- -The release that records our movements moments: If allowed the history  sounds like gambling casinos mechanical cash/money counters. One-hundred bills$ or ten-million bills$ fixed on a steroidal battery: The history of us appears: We reach to touch- -to fondle a tenderly exposed fragile frayed lace of silk- -We are vanishing.

A melting mosaic of past hearts- – baskets of treasure troves belonging to the mind’s gatekeeper- – hiding in plain sight. The counting cash machine reverberates within- -again: Images we remember images our eyes revise to remember:

The image makers- -Cinematographers or photographers: They hold the inventions of our consciousness: Dreaming for real, one or two might stand in a door way with camera(s) in hand: Their moments are ours: They may hold an amber brightened tipped cigarette (cig) off the lips: A glass of enhancement near their lips as well: That person in their guise is you: We as in you wanted for nano seconds to be cinema’s Wim Wenders, Robby Műller, Fellini, Gianni di Venanzo John Alton, Gregg Toland, Akira Kurosawa, Takao Saitô, Masaharu Ueda, Shoji Ueda, and Asakazu Nakai.

History of cultures and continents: The history that doesn’t allow for long embracements- – so grab what you can:

The details of many: NYC.

If moving images slightly remain in our consciousness- -imagine the mind that races like a fleeing roadrunner: I try and secure the singular frames of more cities, more countries, more continents and cultures: Faster and faster my eyes awaken to the captures of Bravo, Felice Beato, Mari-Charles-Isidore-Choiselat, Marville, Fenton, Evans and centuries more- -Then repeat.

Past tenses, future tenses- – my lists are always teaming with anachronistic lists: Whatever keeps the imagination equally grounded and afloat: The endless admiration for what illuminates and informs the eyes: The  changes in fractions of seconds- -days before years, years before there is no more breaths to exhume.

Everything I try to remember at one time or another has been siphoned through my eyes like quicksilver: The exalted and the spectacular afloat and elevated: Passages of time- -reels of flights: Then I pause- -My own deja-vu remembers what has been forgotten:

Buildings under construction.

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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