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These images are taken from my video, AVE variation #7.

They represent a personal interpretation of the Spanish landscape filmed aboard the high-speed train AVE (Alta Velocidad Español) between Madrid and Barcelona. This unusual assemblage of abstract forms and sounds represent my interpretation of the beauty of the passing landscape from the perspective of a passenger on a speeding train.

Using digital effects, I created a metaphor of a train journey through time and space. The abstract patterns, colors and sounds inherent in this passing landscape produce a wide variety of audio effects and beautiful images.

Havana, Cuba is a city that “had suffered the ravages of a protracted civil war, pirate raids, a British occupation, two wars of independence, and two popular revolts against domestic tyrants,” as noted by Sebastian A. Arcos, a Cuban scholar. I found its visual features in a condition of severe deterioration.

Everywhere there were derelict buildings, antiquated public facilities, and crumbling residential structures. Blocks full of buildings were now reduced to gutted empty shells propped up by makeshift wall braces. Were these monuments of a failed social experiment or economic misfortune?

Yet even though this island jewel in the sun had succumbed to a relentless decay, the authentic spirit of the Cuban people radiated brightly.

What I hoped to capture in the video “Paseo” and this subsequent book of still photographs is a metaphor for the vibrancy and beauty of the Cuban people, against the crumbling cityscape, using a kaleidoscope of patterns, colors and textures.

In 2010, I took overview photographs of some of the remnants of the old Transbay Terminal site in San Francisco that was being dismantled. The terminal was built in 1939 and was outdated. I stumbled upon what was left of column bases that were used to support the original elevated roadway and terminal facility. These columns had created a tunnel that allowed surface traffic to flow unimpeded beneath the facility.

These images are the result of welders cutting off the steel “I” beam posts that were embedded in concrete and steel collared plinths. The beauty of this construction debris is ephemeral. Images capture the vibrant visual tension between subtle color and a coarse almost brutal steel structure, once severed.

Warm Water Cove is a celebration of another San Francisco; one far off the beaten path and excluded from travel brochures and TripAdvisor. This side of San Francisco was certainly was not host to the "summer of love" nor "little cable cars…". The artist brings into question the value of our culture's desire to clean up the derelict, the discarded and the dirty elements of a city's reality.

Softcover book / perfect bound, size is 8.25" x 11", 40 pages (33 color) printed on 148 gsm super-smooth uncoated paper. Cover is printed 4/0 with Matte laminate. Printed on a four-color digital press.