Russell Lee

Photographer and documentarian, Russell Lee (1903-1986), studied to be a chemical engineer. Chemical engineers design machinery and equipment that convert raw materials into other products. A chemical plant typically looks like this:

Math and science. I see the influence of both in his photographs.

Bulletin Board

The tidy, orderly squares remind me of the periodic table of elements.

Kitchen of Tenant Purchase Client

Pythagoras and his followers believed that the universe is a mathematical structure and that numerical harmony exists in nature, words and music. I think these cabinets are postively Pythagorean.

Bending Gender Rules

Metal pipes, meters, lights, batteries and a powerful engine; the stuff of a laboratory...or a bus.

Linotype Operators of the Chicago Defender

The crux of geometry: How do you measure an abstract space?

Secondhand Tires

My hero, Zero... en masse.