12th Street at Yale

There is a building on the corner of 12th Street and Yale that I go back to a few times each year. I discovered this building after Hurricane Ike. Three weeks of no electricity meant that it was much more pleasant driving around in an air conditioned automobile than sweltering in an unairconditioned house. It was a great time for photography. What I am able to find there  varies considerably but I always come away with a few photographs that I like.

Alcy and I had stopped at our favorite coffee shop on West 19th in the Heights Village. Not being that far away we decided to give the building another look. It hadn't changed much from the last time we had been there but that really doesn't matter, the photographs are always different.

I do three types of  abstracts, the juxtapositioning of order and chaos, design and those that emphasize randomness. Although there is no sharp distinction and considerable overlap between the three, I much prefer the purer randomness photographs. I've told the story a hundred times but I started doing randomness photographs in the oilfields around Burkburnett when I was in high school some fifty plus years ago. Outside of photographing people randomness is my favorite photographic theme because it can be pursued almost anywhere at any time of the day. What I am looking for in randomness is design, shape, form that is created without conscious human intervention. From this spontaneous design I take what I find as interesting, what I find that seems to make a whole for the photograph. I find randomness in the weathered and worn, in discarded clothing, in piles of trash, in cast shadows, in dead creatures--all having their individual and possibly personal connotations well beyond simply subject matter.