My education and professional career as an art historian has informed almost every photograph I produce. As a teacher of art history at the university level, I had opportunity to present courses in the history of architecture, as well as concentrating on architecture in other classes when appropriate.

This life experience fused with my longtime love of photography. In high school, as a class photographer, I used an unwieldy 4x5" Speed Graphic camera – the kind press photographers, like Weegee, used to use and which for so many years served as the front-page logo for The Daily News. Using this press camera taught economy in shooting, since it was difficult to carry around more than twelve sheets of film in their weighty cases. In high school I specialized in sports photography – which, for me, meant that I recorded every football pile-up I saw.

As an art history student I began to use my camera to collect images I could use in teaching. Architecture became my favorite subject matter. While the works I’ve chosen to show in this, my third Eclectic Quintet exhibit, derive from my early experiences looking for teaching materials, they differ in many significant ways.

As a teacher I needed images that would accurately represent the structures and buildings I wanted to discuss in class. Turning these images into fine art was generally out of the question. But, now, thanks to the Westchester Photographic Society, and as an artist-photographer, everything has changed. I no longer need to be faithful to the subject. As you look at the images in this exhibit it is not difficult to see that I’ve changed how these buildings are rendered.

Images nos. 1, 8 and 10 are the most closely representational. All the others have been significantly altered by selection, manipulation, or by the use of unusual lenses. Nos. 2 and 3, use a lens known as a "fish-eye" to record views of almost 180° in their maximum aspect. Nobody normally sees the Guggenheim Museum spread out from side to side or from top to bottom like this. In No. 3, for instance, the observer sees the oculus as a complete circle, looking straight up surrounded by the descending spiral of the gallery ramp, but the human figures are seen straight ahead.

In nos. 4-6, the surfaces of Frank Gehry’s signature Disney Concert Hall (so frequently used these days in television advertisements) have been manipulated to emphasize the toned atmospheric reflections that strike the metal plates. In no. 11, some of the distortions produced by a wide angle lens have been corrected using the image editor PhotoShop, while leaving the exaggerated depth imposed by the camera’s wide-angle lens. The other images have also benefited from the use of technical strategies. The ultimate purpose in all of these is to produce images that are striking and that add levels of interest that are not apparent in real life.

As you survey these images, try to identify how I’ve changed the works I photographed. There is one photograph that has been knit together from three separate images; can you find it?