Architecture of Cities: Primary Colors, Red

I have deliriously stitched together corners of a literary universe: somewhere between Laurence Sterne and Joan Didion, I have relentlessly pursued five hundred years of sentimental journeys of passion.

The most ambiguous question I have ever asked myself is: “Can I commune with my camera”. Or is it may I?

I am never sure if I am aware when and why I am communing. What poses before me I am certain is a capture of the heart: I constantly remind myself that the wonders of our histories are out there for the taking: the capture.

I adore the idea of communing with my past and history’s past: There is something about finding refuge in anothers’ past and integrating it into my present: It makes the photograph like a hub of a web connects a spiders’ universe. Before I was me I admired the minds and moments of others who communed with adversaries and ideas that in most ways are unmatched in our time: Aristotle communed with Alexander the Great: Aesop communed with fables: Thoreau communed with Walden: Kipling’s “…would be King” Daniel and Peachy might be my favorite example of communing: Oh for good measure, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Yorick’s skull: Cervantes’ Sanchez and Quixote makes sense as well.

It is merely a maybe that Ken Kesey’s communing with LSD reminds me of Brancusi’s communing with nature as he marched from Romania to France: is there such a thing as the bawdiest of communing?

I remember when I was one of Henri Matisse’s stark red naked dancers: My mind was joyfully filled with memories of photography’s history: My equally responsive habitués Roger Fenton, Charles Marville, Eduard Baldus and possibly one-hundred more joined hands with me, and have done so for decades: Their works triggered in me something about “happen upon” a capture is an elixir that has stayed with me for some decades: Learning to discover is what heaven is about.

The primary colors of photography: red, yellow and blue reside in my eyes: I utilize the colors as if I am conversing with the science of my photography: everyday the conversation changes as does the prominence of color that poses before me: I cannot have a favorite color: the spectrum of light and color is what makes the fun of my photography more engaging and equally elusive: I want to capture something or anything desperately: objectively it is difficult to always see what is before you.

When a single color winks at me from something hidden in plain sight I am ecstatic: When the color is integrated with the architecture at hand, I feel I have won some sort of victory: When I get to utilize all of the primary colors equally I feel as if I have won a victory.

My efforts to succeed do not know any limits: I have photographed buildings in zero degree temperatures: I have stood in five feet of snow: I scandalized myself by standing in a flood of perspiration as I begged for a sliver of shade in one-hundred degree weather: I have challenged all of the elements of a day and a night to make photography what it can be:

My entire career has been about how I commune with my friends from dancing naked across the planet and how I have found a voice to share with my camera.

“…If I want a crown I must go and hunt it for myself”.

Rudyard Kipling

All photos by Richard Schulman.