Lido Tower: Form and Structure

Lido Tower Stairs

Early morning light at the old Lido diving tower, Lido Beach, Sarasota, Florida. The perfect setting in which to realize the relationship between light and form.

Lido Tower Heights

The lifeguard, a photo student, was about to go on duty. We took a few minutes to examine the Lido Tower structure.

Legs At Rest

Just three examples of why I love black and white photography.

Love Eggs

   There is a dark room in my house that's filled with treasures and junk. It has become a store room for things that once occupied my attentions.  It's filled with things which are waiting for me to do something mysterious with them. At least that's what it feels like when I acknowledge the things that I am.

Love In, Los Angeles, 1968

Some items in my dark room are iconic; I need only glance at them to relive the essence of past experiences. These I call my Soul Treasures.

Making Up

Without thinking, I am inclined to understand that all my things are personal and life-sustaining. That's our culture. We love things. Most of the time it's most difficult to detach from things. That's life.  

Sleeping Alone

Finding this last image recently was a real (suh!) slap-in-the-head for me. I had lost it amongst my junk. I had forgotten that this was one of the first images made during a life long photo theme I called Searching for Anima. 

~ ~ ~

Sermons in Stone

During the 1980s and '90s I fashioned an indulgent self-promotion campaign for my photography business that I called "Sermons in Stone".  

I maintained an old fashioned, wet dark room at the time and insisted on using it as much as possible. So, I gathered pertinent poetry, printed my message on black and white photo paper, and coupled it with a color print affixed to the black and white. I mailed hundreds of these prints around the country.

The photographic theme that, in my mind, brought unity to the whole project was based on my photo collection of "Walls". Here is one such print to click on.

I Love Black and White Photography

Puddles (1980) marks the beginning of an exploration into diptychs. The self-devised exercise was simple: compose a dual image print in the camera. Develop and print it.

Imagine this image hanging on the wall. 

Click on it and tell me how do you feel when you look at it? 

I used a 35mm stereoscopic, half frame camera which yielded 72 images per 36 exposure roll. 

 

Similar framing in Bucket Boy (1980) enhances the pictorial elements of elapsed time and action. However, viewing these adjacent frames, one might find equal or greater viewing satisfaction by horizontally reversing the image. 

Who can tell me why?

Boots and Toes (1980) was a spontaneous collaboration of three people. 

Poolsharks, Florida @ 1987. 

The spacing of half-frame exposures was not always consistent. There was enough slack in the film advance that half frames did not always enjoy separation by a black line. I like what happened here.

       

Back to the early 1980s. 

My first triptych, Trucks, was inspired by my newly born son, Adrian.

Vrrrooom!