conversations with bricks and concrete
January. 28. 2012
“And if you think of Brick, for instance,
and you say to Brick,
“What do you want Brick?”
And Brick says to you
“I like an Arch.”
And if you say to Brick
“Look, arches are expensive,
and I can use a concrete lentil over you.
What do you think of that?”
“Brick?”
Brick says:
“… I like an Arch””
-Louis Kahn
freedom from fear
September. 11. 2011
“All material in nature,
the mountains and the streams and the air and we,
are made of Light which has been spent,
and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow,
and the shadow belongs to Light.”
– Louis Kahn
I came to the United States as a student on August 30th, 2001. 12 days after my arrival, the WTC was bombed.
Still jet-lagged, skipping Ms. Olin’s 9am class, I was asleep when Alli barged into my dorm room and exclaimed, “Ishi! They bombed the WTC!” But in my fitful fever, my mind couldn’t parse through the information well enough to command consciousness and I zoomed back into sleep. It was only later when I answered the phone to my new best friend’s quivering voice that I realized what had just happened.
Even as I stood trembling, incapacitated by shock waves of horror flowing through my being, living the crash in my head, I couldn’t entirely fathom it all. And somewhere in my trembling, I realized I knew this feeling all too well. It was the first attack on American soil, but the Indian soil in me had quivered before in the face of the same terror, many a time.
Before that morning, I did not know what WTC stood for and had never been to New York. Shy in my newness I wondered if I could honestly be a part of the grief? In which capacity does a legal alien console her 12 day old friends?
Although it wasn’t all 9/11 that did it, since that fateful day, I have grown up. The event gave me a premature preview into the American psyche and this society’s mechanisms of dealing with grief and disaster, very different from the fatalist nonchalance I was used to in India…With typically American efficiency, meetings were called, we were given phones to call home to re-assure our parents and cautioned against going out into town alone. Caught off-guard and cornered into switching points of view, my sense of self questioned itself and for the first time I contemplated my being as the Other.
I have lived and loved, won and lost and surrendered pieces of my heart to souls deep within American folds while nurturing them into mine; I have watched the dispersion of fear and the struggle to overcome it in an intoxicated, unpredictable dance which moves us all through the darkness, through the light. Resilience is a beautiful thing, grace under pressure, that is what defines a great civilization, or a human being.
“I have no fear at all at all, I have no fears at all.”
Cyclical City
September. 1. 2011
Meandering through the streets of Tokyo, by yours truly. A very brief photo-essay for Architizer based on my Traveling Fellowship to Tokyo in October 2010…hope you enjoy the escapades!
check it!
August. 4. 2011
Commission for Architizer- shots of the Perot Museum as published.
The deck park is going to make this whole thing come alive, hopefully people will get out there to hang, once the triple digit heat leaves the city alone! All in good time, I guess!
morphosis
July. 31. 2011
Just got off Woodall Rogers Freeway, shooting the Perot Museum of Science and Nature for Architizer after an exhilarating adventure, treading the highway and feeling cars swooshhh past my tripod!
Something about the first shot reminds me of the quarries Edward Burtynsky’s often shoots…except the delineation of chiseled form is so much more controlled…more photographic adventures ahead, as this beautiful beast comes alive.
My photographs are up on architizer’s website, so enjoy some Morphosis if you will, and send me some lovings on www.facebook.com/studioish!
all i want to be
June. 6. 2011
you know…as opposed to, not-
look here
February. 15. 2011
I love how the sculptural lines twirl around, breaking up the frame…ahh the beauty of a sunlit facade and its collision with art!
If I was the DMA I would make postcards out of this one.
not a bernini
February. 13. 2011
I thought it was only right that this picture followed its predecessor! I personally LOVE this European quirk- if you can’t see the real deal, there’s a print of it filling the void for you…some tourists of course, beg to differ.
bernini
February. 9. 2011
restfulness in bernini shade…
Rupinder, I remember making me repeat in studio, “Columns are beautiful things.”
scramble
November. 3. 2010
This is the Shibuya Scramble Crossing in Tokyo- the world’s busiest pedestrian intersection. Read more of that story on my travel blog here.
I love populous places…the flooding of space with beings. Think about that-
I like to think about each one of these people walking home to someone, each with a story, that I may never know, but can imagine and deconstruct given the reaches of my imagination…
prada
October. 17. 2010
it glows like the jewel it is…
I still don’t think I’m done with it yet.
cornered
October. 15. 2010
there was this joke I used to tell when I was little- “where do two walls go to meet?” I’d ask, answer: ”In a corner!
this ain’t no ordinary meeting….way to make art out of a corner
I can’t stop salivating!
piper at the gates of dawn
September. 27. 2010
…or something along those lines.
I miss India this time of year…when the air switches from summer to fall…it changes the taste of morning mist
photo from my exhibition called “On the Raiments of the Arcane.” Wood cuts and photographs…aah I miss the smell of those laser cut burnt lines too. Good Morning Nostalgia!
transitions
September. 19. 2010
walkin down the Quarter in good ole Nawlins and such…
LOVE how they painted the staircase in split facade colours! haha
the new fall issue of Columns is out- go check out the transitions article and a bunch more by yours truly!
Happy SUN-DEEEE!!!
balcony
August. 5. 2010
I could make postcards outta this one and make a buck or two…
I could live in New Orleans.
uh huh
June. 13. 2010
Windows stretching their arms out open- and embracing the world- hugs for everyone!
in the restful arms of silence
June. 11. 2010
Everyone should get away to peace, even if briefly
When I can’t, I remember and relish the times when I did…
I was thinking of the Bahai faith. If I ever go religious, this’ll be my idea of religion.
If you need a read, click the thumbnail for an old article pressed in CONTEXTURE. Just like I wrote it, back in ’06
the man with the hat
June. 10. 2010
Photo shoots like this one are the highs of photo-journalism…
the coming together of things:
my love
for people/character/art/ architecture/ photography/ wandering/ doing/ making/ learning/
and sunlight
Meet Frank Welch.
If you haven’t heard of him you should look him up here.
To say he has moulded the shape of regional modernism here in Texas may be an inadequate beginning…the man with the hat has switched them out often.
His collected photography can be found here.
Look for my Profile interview with him in the next issue of COLUMNS!
+
May. 17. 2010
Studies of the corner of Houston and Elm St. for The Sixth Floor Museum sign
Diagramming origins of the sign’s geometry mapping bullets shot and sightlines from Dealey Plaza
The sign installed in place
It’s so beautiful to see ideas turn into drawings into renderings into reality…the translation of thought into action…
Our gorgeous Museum Store + Cafe (that plus was a battle) sign was installed this weekend and boy! it feels like a victory!
Like freeing a building corner and taking it for a spin…
[A Corgan Associates Project]
the flood at 3pm
May. 6. 2010
that’s how you fall in love with Kahn
the whole goddamn idea of him- and years later when rolling through Penn Station I
stepped off and lingered on-
just for him
