Architecture of Cities: Mapping Beauty XXIII

Truthful Fiction

It takes two to Tango: Every photograph I make is a dance: A recipe with a dash of phantasmagoria  and Applied Science: Two words, two worlds hinged together by vocabulary- -creatively: The two conceptual mindsets nest alongside- – Holding a secret whisper inside my camera: The conscious and unconscious life. The visual experiences likens the cotton of sheep and the steel of industry intermingling: Billions witness this stage enactment as if admiring the flight of a boomerang. Then again we dance.

Phantasmagoria is where I live when my mind and body are en route- -en route to visit an unexpected or entertain an expected capture. Sherlock Holmes had his seven-per-cent-solution, Coleridge exposed his  “Kubla Khan’’  unrestrained dreamscapes: I merely imagine: camera in hand I march towards somewhere almost anywhere creating uninhibited fantasy’s- -uninhibited truths. The visual ideas seen in my footsteps and architecture’s  footprints arrive and vanish as quickly as the imagination allows.

Photography is an adventure where fantasy is fused with an imaginary not yet experienced: Applied Sciences are the home of the practical and manufactured mechanisms that are utilized to build- -and fuse the chemical and material: The promise of invention poses and sits before the eyes and invites the imagination- -the fictional truth.

Cities are introduced to my camera: Cities that I have not known- -They may vanish and maybe rebirthed: Time is not on my side: Two-hundred plus countries live on the planet: Innumerable cities arrive and pass as in passed: I must hurry- -we must hurry: Dreams are accumulating: Dreams are here and then:

I step into my dreams the same way I step into movies: I was side by side with Jean Gabin in Pépé Le Moko: The Casbah was ours: I was side by side with Kirk Douglas in The Detective: New York was ours: I was side by side with Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai: Multiple cities were ours.

I daily remind my camera that we are alive in worlds not ours: I daily Step into Liquid as the surfing documentary begs: I want to be alive in worlds not quite yours- -not quite mine: Alive in worlds larger than we allow ourselves to venture into: I invite phantasmagoria into my mind and I step into liquid and there again the shutter is released- -and so I dream: I need to live:

There are no checkmates in my photography: The science of dreams the dreams that become science are hidden places like spare cupboards where I can stash away moments for tomorrow- -imaginary moments to apply the science and imagination of photography to capture something and almost anything:

I stood in Agra: I stood in Rio: I stood inside the oceans’ waves, the desert’s sands and the apex of mountains- -I have come to believe that Lewis Carroll’s “Alice is real”- -Ursula K. Le Guin’ science fiction is truthful and Tolkiens middle earth is near by: How else do I explain dreaming while constructing a photograph in mind and in truthful fiction?

Charles Sheeler and Edward Weston for example never merely snapped a photograph: They constructed images: They manufactured tones and shapes to accommodate their ideas: Their photography of architecture was never a shutter release away: They recorded moments: They manufactured  exposures: They considered how and why to utilize chemicals: Phantasmagoria and Applied Sciences seen in architecture’s history- -Photography’s history: Addressed in their time and in real time: I can only imagine the  photographs I dream about: Then I continue in my very own playpen.