Architectonic Iterations

Architecture is about scale, spatial interplay, structure, color, light, transparency, and solidity. It is about dimension and depth; it is a primal element in our culture and existence. The challenge of the depiction of architecture is to be descriptive and illuminating without necessarily being conceptual or abstract. Architectural photography, with its ability to record subtle qualities of space, light, and materials, provides an objective experience, but one that alters dimensionality.

The intent of this series is to take independently vital images, replicate them, and recombine them to generate a new incarnation. They are no longer spatially inert, no longer held to within the confines of the paper surface, the borders of the image frame, or the parameters of the original assignment. The two-dimensional representation is transformed into a volatile image, one that evokes yet another iconography, scale, or vision, sometimes anthropomorphic, sometimes chaotic, sometimes a new architecture unto itself. These constructs are far removed from, yet akin to, the original document, which remains at the core of every image.

The “Architectonic Iterations” series offers a coerced collision of concepts integrating the tectonics of the architecture, absorbing and re-presenting the architects’ creative, scientific, and architectural interpretations while at the same time translating the languages of architecture, of pictorial documentation, of reassemblage into the language of artistic composition.

Urban Focus

Digital cameras and mass consumerism has allowed everyone to become a “photographer”. The internet has facilitated the rampant dissemination and appropriation of imagery. The need for immediate response generated by our culture has become an impediment for people to see and appreciate what lies in front of them. Our current climate is unprecedented in the continuous filling of time with images, words, noise, and concepts. We are all connected yet disconnected because of our inability to remove ourselves from the pace with which we need to operate and sometimes broadcast our lives.

This project addresses our inability to look critically at the rapidly transforming tapestry of our world. Few pay attention to the critical and frightening changes that surround us whether it is cultural, financial, or environmental. It is challenging to set boundaries between the real and the hype of the media even in our personal lives. Urban Focus references what happens in the moment when something comes across our line of vision before it disappears never to be reclaimed, why is it important and should be noticed.

Greyhounds

The fluid lines and quiet grace of the retired racing greyhound were the inspiration for this body of work. But these photos have an agenda that goes beyond simply capturing the unassuming elegance of this breed: it is my hope that the work presented will bring about greater public awareness of these dogs and the unique challenges they face after their racing careers have ended.

With the collaboration of several other creative photographers and graphic designers, I began this project to assist Greyhounds Only, an adoption group based in the metro Chicago area. The images in this body of work now form the basis for the book Greyhounds which was published by Stewart, Tabori and Chang, a division of Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in fall of 2008. Everyone was committed to the project to assist in enhancing public awareness for this remarkable breed of dog. It is our hope that the spirit of the breed paid homage to in my photographs would ultimately be instrumental in assisting with the adoption efforts of the hundreds of greyhound groups across the country and around the world. Now that greyhound racing has waned in the US many groups like Greyhounds Only are focusing their efforts on re-homing greyhounds racing Ireland and Australia. Hopefully there will be an updated version of this book in the future. 

The Fairy Castle

My fascination with interiors and architecture has spanned the length of my commitment to photography. I have documented many types of environments over the years, some created specifically for the photograph itself, some existent, some assigned. I had always aspired to photograph a miniatures project. The concept of transformation and discrepancy of scale combined with the dissolution of a presumed reality, posed a fascinating challenge to me. When the prospect presented itself for me to work on one of the foremost miniature’s installations, I jumped at the opportunity. I had the privilege of documenting the Colleen Moore Fairy Castle at the Museum of Science and Industry, a gift to the museum from the renowned silent film era star Colleen Moore, the original “flapper”.

The castle measures 8'7" x 8'2" x 7'7" and is decorated with fairy tale themes at a scale of one inch to one foot. The miniature building houses treasures, which range from King Arthur’s sword Excalibur to a bust of Pope Pius IX with the seal of the Vatican on the bottom, to a bear skin rug that is really an ermine skin, with a mouse's teeth. Fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson and The Brothers Grimm decorate the walls and the literature of John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Agatha Christie among others lines its library shelves. Musical manuscripts in the castle range from the work of Igor Stravinsky to George Gershwin, and the paintings and sculpture run the gamut from Walt Disney to Roman bronze busts from about the first century AD.

The images document the richly textured detail of Colleen Moore’s imagination. They meticulously map the castle from one end to the other juxtaposing object within space and creating a tension between reality and fantasy throughout. The images are about real objects in real space but present the question of what is real or simulated, factual or fictional. These are especially relevant issues in our information-saturated age.

By expanding the minute details of this architectural treasure, the images speak about a dreamlike environment, which has its own sense of history, emboldened by the realistic yet transforming photography. An effort has been made to bring the issues of contrary scale into another plane of cognition where the viewer believes at first glance that he knows what he is seeing until further inspection indicates that he might not.

I photographed the splendor of the castle as if it was a human scale environment. The technical predicament this inspired was a unique challenge that required special equipment not to be procured at the local camera store. I created illumination sources out of miniature flashlights and booms out of dowel rods to try to maximize the believability of the photography. I used mirrors and Mylar all to try to enhance the fairy-like quality of selected lighting. My intent from the beginning of the assignment was to produce a body of work (using 4X5 and 2 1/4 color transparencies), which would eventually be exhibited at double or triple the scale of the actual fairy castle as archival pigment prints.

I have always hoped to bring Colleen Moore’s fantasy world to a larger audience in a less contextual way than it has been viewed to date.

Interior Constructs

Since the beginning of my engagement with photography, I have always had an intense affinity for the interior.

An interior exists as a result of the relationship between the objects, the architecture, the environment they create, and the human being who inhabits within. An interior can be a place for the development of a private or a public identity, depending on its individual personalization. It can be safe, insular, isolating, frightening, unexpected, lonely, or comforting. An interior can represent a haven, be communal, or even become an inescapable prison.

These rooms are metaphorical spaces. They symbolize, pay homage to, are fanciful, sometimes amusing and all while they articulate concerns and questions. These full-scale three-dimensional interiors were created singularly with the intention of being depicted as two-dimensional images. Nothing remained after the photograph was executed but their image and their existence as real environments was transitory.

Photoshop compositing never entered into their execution.

820 Ebony/Jet

“Every floor is different, and every floor has surprises.”
—John H. Johnson, former CEO Johnson Publishing Company

This project documents the core essence of the Johnson Publishing Company, the most influential African American–owned corporation of its day. It focuses on their historic building in its semi-skeletal state—before the last vestiges of the original workspace vanish. These lively interiors fostered the creativity of a staff working in a variety of media, including the iconic Ebony and Jet magazines. The Johnson Building still embodies the spirit of this company, which occupied this space essentially unaltered from 1972 to 2012. It remains a genuine cultural time capsule of African American enterprise: a specific stylistic vocabulary that has survived the passage of the decades. The Johnson Building, stripped of its furnishings, presents a unique opportunity: to document the resonant interiors of its long-time occupant—interiors that simultaneously represent the spirit of this landmark company and the sense of its loss, of a seminal moment in African American history and the history of this nation.