Architecture of Cities: The Yellow Rolls Royce and Philip Johnson

My every, begins with the nightmarish possibilities assumed in both Rod Serling’s “A Kind Of Stopwatch” and “Ninety Years Without Slumbering”. When time stops, I am alone: Alone is when the shutter sounds loudest: Then there is almost everything Orwell: His “Road…” books: They begin and end with the paths to a place: The place where my camera may see again something: Every day the end may be near: Serling and Orwell complicate the pleasures my mind sees: What a dream that may be: Their end is not mine but embraced nevertheless: My end will be a final capture: My eyes gratefully realize there is today:

I daily realize I am a dreamweaver: I became aware while watching Woody Allen’s movie Love and Death: In one train car, the preening rich Russians frolic: Across the train tracks, the peasants sit miserably in flickering fading lights: I inadvertently entered the minds of others: Observing minds of others  became a window into something more:

The Yellow Rolls-Royce movie is a nice story about people traveling through time like myself: My eyes see the history of mine and others in each frame: Across maybe a decade my eyes travel from England in remaining posh times: The story travels through the decade ahead: Through France, Italy, Yugoslavia amidst armed resistance and more: My imaginary moments are remembered along with famous cohorts of 1950’s and 1960’s: Rex Harrison, Jeanne Moreau, George C. Scott, Ingrid Bergman and more: Actors dramatizing era’s of yore with the yellow 1931 Phantom ll in tow:

The idea of feeling the visual impact of a world foreign to me is almost too delicious: A foreign world with foreign countries in foreign times ablaze across the celluloid screen is imprinted on the eyes forever: The importance of the cinematic moments compel me to embark on my own journeys: To capture what my camera may dream: Sans a yellow Rolls-Royce.

My everyday is about living in a cocoon waiting to be released: The fear remains everyday that I may not be released to capture: My eyes fading before I am free to see becomes a nightmare: Then I dream some more: I live in the fantasies created by cinema: I believe in every frame: I dream I was careening through Europe in a yellow Rolls-Royce.

My camera dips its toes into parallel universes: I see what my camera imagines in a glow of fantasia and the bracing realities of our everyday history: I am sure that is what makes picture taking so pleasurable: To awaken in a dream and to stroll in realities is quite the emotional ride: The ride of necessity:

The Yellow Rolls-Royce is a composite story through a decade of real fantasy’s: The very same decade a real life journey and adventure took place: Over the course of almost a decade the architect Philip Johnson ingratiated himself with Europe’s German vision: Bon Vivant, in various years he landed in a 1929 Packard convertible: 1930 A Cord-L convertible and the 1937 Cord B12:

I often wondered about the mind of this architect: As I remembered dreaming of passengering in the “Rolls”; what if I sat side by side with the architect Philip Johnson: What if I was passengering in his posh, stylish moments of automobile design: What was the mind like in this American with a tad of German vision in his own dreamscape: What if in the moment I had been privy to the insight of his vision, dream,mind: What would my camera know to see: How would we merge our visions as he explored all architects, architecture and cultural agendas in single frame work:

The two separate universes of fact and fiction, imaginary and real are mine to imagine: Separate universes to allow my camera to run amok with cantilevered fantasies: The eyes travel(ed): The continent countryside and cities of another place and mind are mine:

I have spent a career reckoning with where I take the camera to see what needs to be seen:

Philip Johnson once opened his Rolodex for me: He thought it was important that I meet Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, David Childs and more: I was invited to see worlds not known to me:

Everyday I twist my rubik’s cube anew as one would impress upon a lucky charm: I pray alongside my diving rod: Imaging what I might  I imagine in all universes parallel to mine: I have been living in dreams: It happens to be such a beautiful reality: The universes may belong to others: My camera belongs to my histories.