The Company You Keep
A Gathering of Minds
TED FOUNDER Richard Saul Wurman:
Close your eyes. Imagine you are on a journey accompanying me to see the cultural world extraordinaire my eyes have by luck visited the past forty years. It may not be a unique experience, but it is mine.
I remember reading Geoff Dyer’s “But Beautiful”. I remember thinking that my world encountered a similar range of creative forces. The faces and places were/are the zeitgeist of generations. I feel my photography world is transcendentally akin to Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki journey in a slight way. I too traveled with the benefit of the defining currents. I too benefited as any explorer would by a few mishaps along the way. Like all explorers you live or die by luck. My camera as I explained to Frank Gehry one night, is now merely a witness to a history of architecture. I am fortunate to be able to record in still frames whatever matters.
When I first met Richard Wurman, it was at the Gehry Strategic Alliance. The event in New York was intended to see if they could launch a program to essentially share a cloud based software program for architects around the world. Twenty-Five or so of the world’s great architecture and technology minds and practitioners (Richard Wurman, Frank Gehry, David Childs, David Rockwell, Moshe Safdie, Greg Lynn, Wolf Prix and Zaha Hadid and more)gathered. My camera was invited to record.
The next time I met Richard, was at his Newport Rhode Island birthday celebration. This time Yo-Yo Ma performed a short piece in Richard’s honor. Frank Gehry, Moshe Safdie and thirty or so guests attended. My camera was there merely to record history. There are only a handful of people who may bring together a collection of aces at one time. Maybe Herbert Muschamp comes to mind when he organized a rebuild 9/11 gathering of architectural giants(whom I photographed).
The next time I met with Richard Wurman was at his home in Miami. Miami was like a “Lost in Translation” adventure. Miami is a place I want to like, but not sure how to navigate. As I began my portrait session, I found myself trying to imagine what was going on inside of his brain. It was like watching a Whirling Butterfly attracting some of the worlds most colorful and intellectual pollinators. I was just a camera, not a pollinator. I tried to explain to Richard while shooting that my mind was better suited to a one on one conversation with a building or an inanimate object than an enjoyable sparring match with him. I had to remind him how I almost swallowed Yo-Yo Ma’s ear trying to get to the heart of his unearthly talents. I told him that my life was like the Looney Tunes’ Road Runner: I have befallen everything the Road Runner has aside from the “Beep Beep”.
We spent the sweltering afternoon aside his pool with swords drawn. He danced through each subject with so much more wily grace than I could muster. I am certain it has something to do with the Whirling Butterfly pollinating in his brain.
The company he keeps, is the lure. He gathers minds like Nabakov would collect butterflies. He belongs on the pages of Aesop’s Fables. He has planted the seeds for a community of ideas. Those ideas have been shared throughout the world for better or worse.
Sometimes when I reflect on my photo sessions with Richard, I hear in my mind the Miles Davis collaboration with Louis Malle’s “Elevator to the Gallows”. It is the kind of remembrance that is jazz, my jazz.
