Photography may be an art, but it’s one of the lowest forms.
To me, all art is mental shit anyway, simply the waste of whatever a person’s mind has recently consumed, reeking with the stench of their own odious beliefs and illusions.
Photography, in particular, is such a flimsy, throwaway medium—a single moment in time captured, but like most moments, easily discarded and forgotten.
At a time when humans absorb a steady stream of images in every waking moment, the value of a single photograph is less than nothing.
It’s amusing how pretentious so many photographers are about their so-called craft—the most spectacular image may grab a person’s attention for a second or two, tops, before they scroll past and immediately forget it.
Your pretty picture isn’t important, and no one gives a shit about it but you.
Needless to say, I don’t identify as a photographer, and I’m certainly no artist. I’m not attaching my ego to that kind of nonsense.
I consider architectural photography to be the same as pornography. Just like all dicks and vaginas run together after you’ve seen a thousand of them, one building looks much like another after you’ve photographed your first few hundred.
A structure may look appealing in a certain light or at a particular angle, but few are truly exceptional, and I’m always delighted to find the standouts. Even then, they’re just buildings—decaying monuments to human fragility and arrogance, all shaped in the same basic forms.
To me, photography is all about understanding light and shadow, and in order to be any damn good at capturing the light, you can’t be afraid to confront the shadow. Period.
I don’t have a mind for technicalities, and I don’t give a fuck about shutter speeds, Canon vs. Nikon, or whatever other wankery photographers obsess over to make themselves feel special.
For more than twenty years, I used cheap point-and-shoot cameras because that’s all I could afford. I was only able to buy a DSLR camera a few years ago, and it was one of the least expensive ones I could find.
Many of my pictures have been taken with a phone, especially interior shots, because God knows people freak out if you use a camera inside a building.
Nothing reveals the irrational stupidity of the human mind quite like photography. Snap a bunch of pics with a phone, and no one blinks an eye. Pull out an actual camera, and they suddenly think you’re a terrorist.
Photography long ago tapped into an anti-authoritarian streak that lay dormant in me, and over time, has magnified that rebellion into a defining personality trait.
I’ve been chased down too many times by power-hungry security guards and angry homeowners too dumb to understand that photography in public spaces is still perfectly legal in the United States—one of the few freedoms we have left in this dictatorial shambles we call a free country.
You’re gonna come after me in your car and threaten to call the police for taking pics of your ugly old house from the sidewalk? Like it isn’t all over Google Maps, Zillow, real estate websites, or the local tax assessor’s site, where I can see photos, floor plans, your full name, and how much you overpaid for that pile.
In fact, that’s how I plan my shots in advance—by carefully studying your house online. Trust me, I don’t want to have to fuck around outside your place any longer than necessary.
I’m only observing the facade of your house, which will likely outlast your insignificant carcass. Go console yourself by meditating on your property value, which is probably the only thing you have to show for your pathetic excuse of a life.
And don’t give me shit about how you’re scared because crime’s gotten so bad in your neighborhood—crooks are dumb as hell; they’re not out carefully taking pictures like it’s some insipid espionage film. I don’t indulge my fears, and I’m not entertaining your dark fantasies either.
It was particularly amusing in the years when Atlanta was busy trying to convince the world it was the new Hollywood (it wasn’t, and never will be). People who whored out their homes for some film production didn’t mind if a sex scene was shot in their bedroom, but got mad if a guy out front was taking pics with his little camera. Fuck off with that nonsense.
So far at least, the power-tripping theatrics I’ve encountered in the field have been exclusive to the Southeast, where the reigning mythology hasn’t shifted much from the slavery days—even in Atlanta, which cloaks itself in a progressive veneer but is essentially rooted in the same old top-down system of patriarchal control.
It’s only in the Deep South where I get the distinct feeling that people view public photography as some existential threat to their fragile little social order.
I can’t count how many times I’ve had to soothe some angry Southerner by smiling sweetly, pulling out the old drawl, and saying, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” accompanied by some groveling song-and-dance to sufficiently demonstrate that I know my place.
Then I just go back when they’re gone and finish the job.
On one of my first visits to New York, a cop walked up to me while I was photographing a building. Oh, great, here we go, I thought, and then he whipped out his phone and started showing me his own street photography.
Much of it has to do with the size of a place: in cities of actual consequence, where people’s lives are engaged in meaningful activity, no one even notices a guy with a camera.
It’s the dead podunk towns I dread the most, where people are in thrall to fear and have nothing better to do than to get up in your business—or threaten your life, as happened to me once when I returned to take pictures in the shithole where I grew up.
“I’ve got a gun on me,” big boy growled in that familiar twang I despise. Welcome back to hell, I thought.
Photography is lonely work, mentally demanding, physically exhausting, and I find little glory in it. I have no emotional attachment to it, but over time, the process has become a spiritual discipline for me, essentially a form of meditation.
In the best moments, I feel like I can capture a spark of the divine imagination, especially when the subject is one that my soul connects with—anything by G.L. Norrman, for example.
For better or worse, photography is one of the things I was put on this earth to do, and I’ll keep plugging away at it despite its attendant perils and frustrations.
This postcard depicts the Eureka Hotel in Abbeville, South Carolina, designed by G.L. Norrman and completed in 1903.
Published by C.A. Milford & Co. of Abbeville and printed in Germany, the card was postmarked in Abbeville on May 5, year unknown, and addressed to Mrs. Hugh Beacham in Havelock, North Carolina.
The following note is written on the back:
“Hope every body O.K. in Havelock am having very nice time to be on sticks but do not have to walk any Leave for Atla to day guy”
This postcard depicts Candler Hall at the University of Georgia in Athens, designed by G.L. Norrman and completed in 1902.
M.R. helpfully marks “My room” with an “X” on the front, and writes perfunctorily on the back:
“Wed. Morning
Sep. 1 – 7 A.M.Mailed my letter this morning on the train, just a few minutes after writing it. Am leaving hotel new for depot. Address me Collins, Ga.”
Published by the McGregor Company of Athens, the card was postmarked in Athens at 11 a .m. on September 1, 1909, and addressed to Miss Bessie Rogers of 118 N. Wilmington Street in Raleigh, North Carolina.
This postcard depicts the main dining room of Denmark Hall at the University of Georgia in Athens, designed by G.L. Norrman and completed in 1902.
Copyrighted by Salter, the card was postmarked in Carlton, Georgia, on August 25, 1907, and addressed to Mr. H.P. Heath in Talbotton, Georgia.
Written on the back is the following note:
“Hope to see you in Athens by the 14th at the latest. I think I’ll go up on the 12th. Yours Jo”
A woman with a plan—I like.
Six of New York’s surviving Gilded Age mansions hide in plain sight on Madison Avenue, and most people would never suspect they were once residences.
Stretching across an entire block, the imposing Villard Houses complex looks every bit like a public building, but it was initially designed as six attached townhomes.
Henry Villard originally owned the property, and in the early 1880s, he hired McKim, Mead & White to design houses on it for himself and five other executives of his railroad company.1
With the firm’s star designer, Stanford White, otherwise engaged, the project’s design fell to Joseph Wells, an assistant who discarded White’s original sketches and opted for an exquisite Renaissance-inspired scheme.2
Wells’ work on this project was magnificent. Judging from this and his designs for the New York Life Buildings in Kansas City and Omaha, and the Russell & Erwin Building in New Britain, Connecticut, I’d venture to say he was more talented than White—certainly he was more disciplined.
Wells styled the Villard Houses as an Italian palazzo, reportedly inspired by the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Palazzo Farnese,3 and Villa Farnesina.4
The three-story homes included basements and attics and were built around a central courtyard, with brownstone facades and a tile roof. The ornamentation is sparse but striking, forming a tasteful, cohesive design that is far more subdued than many of White’s buildings, which were often quite garish.
The Villard Houses marked an important turning point for McKim, Mead & White, as Wells’ Renaissance-influenced design received widespread public acclaim, prompting the firm to look increasingly toward Italian architecture for inspiration.5
The project itself was a bust, however: Villard’s company failed during construction, and the homes were put up for sale before the interiors were completed.6 Typical Gilded Age bullshit. The firm ultimately finished the interiors of four of the homes.7
Stanford White and Joseph Wells reportedly had a complex and contentious relationship that grew increasingly strained through the 1880s as White’s hard-partying lifestyle began to eclipse his work output, and Wells handled major projects without credit or commensurate pay.8
Although he was virtually unknown to the public, Wells was highly esteemed in the architectural community, and when he abruptly died in 1890, his friend Cass Gilbert said he “had the temperament which makes artists unfit to cope with the world, and which, therefore, kept them always as assistant rather than principals.”9 Woof.
Granted, I tend to root for talented people who stay out of the spotlight, but I consider Wells an unsung genius, and the Villard Houses are undoubtedly his finest surviving work.
