Tod Papageorge

“The Athenian Acropolis and New York City’s Central Park: two legendary spaces
enclosed from the cities surrounding them, and, for me, resonating with echoes of
Athena and Adam and Eve and the worlds those mythic fi gures expressed.
At least that is how I understood those two great spaces, and the possibilities for
meaning that they presented to my camera—a camera that, although clumsy and
diffi cult to use, was the only one that I felt could suggest the inimitable beauty of
the light in both places, whether the Attic light bouncing off the bright stone of
the Parthenon or the softer illumination caressing the landscape of Central Park.
This light, applied to fl esh, might describe not only a local circumstance—a tourist
in Athens, a sunbather in Manhattan—but also (I hoped) call up resonances,
whether of the ancient Panathenaic procession to the top of Acropolis, or
elemental tales told in the Bible or Chaucer or Shakespeare. Such were my
ambitions, anyway, or some part of them. Pursued, for the most part, in the high
light of summer, and (I also hoped) with grace, directness and clarity. (Who better
to understand that aesthetic than Athenians?)”

Tod Papageorge