Your Articles, Research & Approach to Karl Struss is just …

S U B L I M E ! ! ! .

a devoted Karl Struss & Nestor Almendros follower.

Very best regards.

Rene Gaston AMC

Clarence White’s portrait of Karl Struss shows a handsome and formidable young man with astonishing hands. His face seems set in a happy glow that is not common for the period in portraiture. It has a quality that seems to trump other portraits in depth and appeal. How incredible to have met this pioneer of photography yourself!

It was interesting to me that he took up aerial photography at Langley. My grandfather was an early aviator who taught at Princeton Ground School around this time and also eventually was in command of Langley in later years. He too was involved in early aerial photography. In those days the corps were close and even crossed the national lines in lifelong friendships. Germans, French, Russian, British and U.S. aviators were admiring of each other’s accomplishments. Rivalries were of a more athletic than political nature.

I can imagine how the troubles Struss had later must have hurt him. Difficult then and still, courage to speak one’s mind freely can be a wild card, even in the 21st century.

I so loved the platinum prints of New York. There is a magic in them that is almost spiritual in it’s accomplishment. The Brooklyn Bridge has so many axis points of beauty and the shadows, form and light in the composition of the Ferry Slip are breathtaking. As a resident (forever in my heart) of NYC for nearly twenty years – my early twenties on – I never tired of the art of New York rooftops and water towers. ” Housetops” took me to personal memory vaults of the Upper East Side before the high rise buildings began to block this kind of montage to dreams and fantasies.