Architecture of Cities: A Point of View

Thomas Heatherwick “The Vessel” Hudson Yards, New York City.

I discovered the abyss from a perch above my precipice:

I have been perpetually sucked through voids of non pixilated color chromed fine grained embedded images: A lifetime of visual worlds not mine; But mine.

Rollercoasting in my interior-landscape: A former child’s toy chest: Vintage zoetropes providing the illusions of truth and dreams: Dreams in my colorful phantasm world I call my photography:

I fanatically decide what my subconscious sees: Might my moments suit my cameras; my lives past and ahead:

When I pass to my below or above I will have arrived at my lone own empyrean: A place where I can imagine every capture I have dreamed for:

I have stood alone with those at sea: Their ends might be known: They dreamed:

London: Architects Vinoy and Foster and more.

Alone with discoverers I stood: Those who have seen what I know: They have seen where I have been: I have seen what I have dreamed: I know what is meant to be in a frame: My passion is about living in a cameras’ eye:

I am like seven billion others: I may not know them: I am like seven billion others who leave their homes every day: I live in their minds: They live in mine: I must consider every option: Their days are mine: All of my frames are steps to be made: I never make a photograph alone:

The self can be wickedly enlightening: I imagine I have learned how to see: I imagine the conversations with my other selves: There are voices that I may nod to: There are voices who just  may be me:

One day more than four decades ago I happened upon the corners of four cities: I began with a photograph: I imagined blanketing entire cities with shutter-stops and single lens reflex:

I stood with the heroes of my time: The repetition of craft can be inspiring:

Casper David Friedrich posed boldly: The “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog is not me: It is a mere place where I can dream alone: It might be a place where I can stand and see: The metaphors are almost reality: The voices of so many bring solace to my eyes above a precipice: My camera poses like Casper for the moment:

New York: Past and future.

Most days I embark on not a journey but a suspension of disbelief: I stand where I can see south and north as one: Fifth Avenue beyond the Gilded Age: There is north: From somewhere on Forty-Second Street between Fifth Avenue and just shy of Madison Avenue the lens extends to possibly a Vanderbilt’s mansion: If the extension is south, it may be to a life among Rockefellers: Evolution of a city’s life continues to pace my lens past modernity until this very moment: Between what may you have seen and what may become like a commuter I embark and disembark: My daily visit with architecture lives: Built environments present themselves ahead and behind:

The one single moment in the one day among all of everything: I extend the known histories: Beyond possibly something London: Roads Portobello, Oxford, Carnaby, Piccadilly or something: Something beyond Paris: Baron Haussmann eyes the life before the Tower Eiffel:

Beyond something Los Angeles: The hybrid city is home to boulevards, streets, deserts and valleys: A metropolis with a modern search for identity:

Metropolis’s in twenty-four hours or a lifetime invite me back to empyrean vantage points where visual dreams are realized: I venture out to discover what others have shared and what I can see:

I track my eyes: I have an affinity for something: Something dazzling: Something mosaic: Something afar: Something iconic.

Change in cities, countries and continents isa constant: My camera can merely hold on to what might be the truth today: The evolution of cities seems through my lens to rotate and evolve faster than the planets axis rotation: I may only capture  hours not seen by my seven billion: the moments are mere captures maybe never seen: My simple truth is the  presence of architecture on my camera’s framed capture: My past is a constant melding with the present and future: The  built environment presents itself like a strategic battleground: I cannot achieve all that I desire: My life filming our world is a puzzle living in a mixed bag of truths.

My very first photograph in Paris perched above the abyss on my precipice.

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