A few notes on the Azimuth: Degrees of Perception project initiated with Bill Abranowicz long on thirty years ago. Bill and I had just met at Parsons School of Design where Ben Fernandez set me up to work the photo cage & lab, and also to TA for Dennis Simonetti, George Tice, and Bill. Azimuth took off, and — to describe it in brief — was sourced in the geophysical concept of infinite half-space — where the world may be mathematically modeled by bisecting it with an infinite plane (usually this representing the surface of the earth), thus splitting it into two half-spaces. Azimuth was predicated on the idea that Bill and I go out photographing, when one saw something that they wanted to photograph, the other would have the opposite half-space, as indicated by the film plane, within which to compose an image. We worked in 4×5-inch large format which made the process deliberative, and concentrated. Working often at night in urban and rural areas across NYC, New Jersey, and Cape Cod, some exposures pushed an hour! The project did have one exhibition in Washington, DC, in the format of 4×5 contact prints on Kodak Azo paper mounted side-by-side. It wasn’t the optimal solution, but our desire to print the work at 20×24-inches on Oriental Seagull paper was interrupted by the robbery-at-gunpoint of the lab on 23rd Street one night when we were just beginning to print things. I left for France shortly thereafter, done with NYC.
It had the sound, the cadence, of something that Hesse would have Zarathustra speak about. I think the concept began in that time of my existence; when I was first able to read, though perhaps not to understand Steppenwulf. And, contemplating, with friends — in thought and being — the essence of the Shadow of a Hand falling on the Back of the Skull. Imagine that feeling, that presence of vitality: if you can, you will see God. We seek to live in the discovery of what is behind us. Behind and within us. That we come from nothing and all is open, empty before us. more “AZImUTH”
