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Architecture of Cities: Mapping Beauty XXVL

New York’s Chrysler among…

I land in cities to meet head on a type of tale. It might seem that I am in an asylum: Realties abound but tales of fiction and non fiction are truly what photographing cities mean to me.

On certain days my initial steps pace like Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird- –The  appearance to the naked eye is a frenetic kite navigating in the oceans’ breeze: A status of quietude and uncertainty gathering ecstatically: Not until the music vanishes and the kite rest atop motionless grass do I realize I have completed my captures:

The mind influenced by millions begins to toggle between tales and antics by others: To entertain something new and revisit from another time: I discover the range of voices Hunter S. Thompson, Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, Kipling, Saint-Exupéry and more informing my anxious eyes: Adventures arise seen as textured celluloid and imaginary dreams- -My large format camera releases a frame. I spy for another.

A busy day in Bangladesh.

I arrive in cities with a GPS the way Dorothy might have used the Yellow Brick Road- -a necessary path to freedom of discovery and calm: I arrived on a detached Orange Blossom petal meandering independently to the fluent notes of George Bizet’s “Carmen”.  I hovered over Sevilla’s fiery fable: My camera used the visual narrative of a city besieged by an emotional romantic crucible: My camera lens equally like an eye piece monocle or a space age Hubble trailed behind the story’s protagonist as a crutch and as a map: To follow the heroine from street to street: Discover the infrastructure of a stage setting apart life: Tobacco Factory’s , Bullrings and other settings for example shadowed voices and moments from another time. My camera afire- -Carmen’s tale at hand- -I prepared like a matador- -I scoured the city with the grunt of a bull: Moment by moment the city unfolded the story breathed life: The energy powered forward.

Another capture ahead: Tales of myths and truths ahead: I changed cities: My stripes remained the same: I am equally lost and alive as my Carmen is now replaced by the real and mythical tales of “Blues” famed Buddy Boldens’ sounds. Like a gathering of pied pipers devotees: I follow him into the deepest marsh lands:  Alligators, spoonbills and herons acknowledge the trespassing  Cornet sounds: I follow at a distance  but with the pleasure of his sounds into the wild: Onward to Storyville, New Orleans.

The camera is awakened to a new pulse a new fabric of a city to be encountered and discovered.

The music of a period the history of the Creole and Cajun remembrance- The comfort of another’s voice- – my camera follows–I tag along with the Bolden sounds and  photographer E.J Bellocq’s eyes: The city is theirs: I could be an interloper: I am discovering a past life, a new world through the history, left by others: Each city I visit belongs to another yet I am experiencing discoveries that only their DNA could have shared.

Dubai Airport Interior.

Alone in the wilderness is part nature part the mind: In a small way it might be where Kurosawa’sDreams originated: The architect Kengo Kuma commissioned me to photograph a small village- -Yusuhara: Sometimes when I recall my moments there I am reminded of H.G Wells The Island of Dr. Moreau- – if only for the isolation and the forest with sounds of beasts: My imaginations sometimes seem designed by a witche’s coven: Tales and more tales dictate how I see: Tales lead me through landscapes and cityscapes: My camera’s eyes are finding with every moment a map with new discoveries:

Where would our dreams be without the Brazilian tale of the Pink Dolphin: The Japanese Shinto-Buddhist tales of Yurei and Kami: Dubai’s Bedouin jinn: I think I am on solid ground with photography’s history: It seems for ex. that photographers Carleton Watkins, O.Winston Link, Ansel Adams and even Diane Arbus might had similar imaginations in their own private wilderness.

Interior of a palace in Jaipur, India.

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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