Architecture of Cities: Primary Colors, Yellow

Barcelona.

I have hundreds of thousands of visual diaries archived away. I am much more of a visual dreamer than I am a visual diarist: Maybe I am mostly a lion tamer of visual captures.

There is a primal scream that no known creature can hear it: The scream is engaged to a moment  when I espy a capture: That moment will never be seen again in the same light: Then I feel the tingle: Then there is my yellow.

Photography’s vocabulary often sounds like a Winnie the Pooh cast of characters: Pooh, Eeyore, Kanga & Roo, Piglet, Tigger, Rabbit and Owl: somehow auditorily echo photography’s Saturation, Values, Hue, Red, Yellow and Blue. It is only natural that since my visual dreams live in a fictional world, my camera techniques must mimic an animated world of “disbelief”.

Flatiron Building New York City.

I am neither a scientist nor a mathematician: I am certainly not a realist: My problem with reality is that a mere six words enliven and dictate the science and math seen in  the art of photography’s possibilities: I spend my mornings into my nights making pictures from dreams that may live beyond my time: I need more than six words to make captures.

There is yellow in architecture as there are yellow whales: A twenty-foot Cuvier beaked yellow whale was seen diving three-thousand feet into the darkness of an ocean: The intended dinner menu was a giant octopus with eight tremendous arms. As seen from a planet near Saturn the yellow whale appeared like a shooting star amidst a galaxy of seas as the octopus was schooning for safety.

The rare sighting sometimes invokes my own visual captures: sometimes I see something real: sometimes I see a fantasy in my frame: either way if truth be told: I have many dialogues with my cameras: How else would I capture the truest sense of what a photographer can be. My greatest confidant is myself:The voices in my mind triangulate between my ideas, my dreams and my captures: I know that all creations, all inventions and everything that begins with “A”: Anthropology Archaeology ,and Art continue with, “is there more”. There are a ton of nutty minds running around: How many admit to such lunacy.

Somewhere in Tokyo.

Photography’s primaries: red, blue and yellow: enable my eyes to elevate my abilities to the tenth power. Yellow whispers: I am more interesting than red and blue: Yellow guides my eyes as I  swim with my yellow whales: My eyes espy “The Yellow Submarine”: The yellow stars that fly above billions of Chinese: The yellow glow peyote induced spiritual reality experienced  by the Great Plains Indians: Comanche, Kiowa: Cervantes’ Quixote struck out towards dreams beyond the yellow sun: The soft violent yellow mix of smoke seen enveloped in and around “Hell’s” notion of destruction of the World Trade Center “after the fall”:

Sometime in my past I saw the words on a book “I Am Curious Yellow”: Sometime after that I heard a minstrels’ Mellow Yellow: My eyes locked on to a vision  of creamy icing waves highlighting the Hawaiian Island’s amber sunsets atop my Chantilly cake.

Presently Google Offices: Previously Hangar for The Spruce Goose.

Yellow is a life force that brings a  focus to my camera’s eye: Yellow will become an imprint that stays with me for lifetimes not yet lived.

 I tip toed upon entering the California coastal Hercules IV airplane hanger for the “The Spruce Goose”: I glided atop a Tokyo subway station of illuminated steps: A glint of yellow begged my camera for the five-thousandth capture of New York’s Flatiron Building: Sir Norman Fosters’ Gherkin was seen as in a trapezoid with vaguely defined lines:

From Asia to Europe with stops in between  my eyes see primary colors as a subject: Maybe that subject is the proliferation of vibrancy in my photography.

 Century’s of art and architecture have formed how my vision could be: As the film of tears swims across the retina and more …I have realized that the colors of my photography, the significance of the color of photography never wavers.

Maybe it is my landing in a new city: Maybe it is revisiting an old urban friend: Maybe there is a blindness in my future:  Maybe I make a duet dance among colorful  prismatic displays of colors  because as a science fiction writer may suggest: Because my whales await.

Sir Norman Foster’s London The Gherkin: 30 St Mary Axe and Swiss Re Building.

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