In the Knot of Time, an illustrated book of photographs and brief autobiographical
narratives, resembles a film storyboard, except that it is an end in itself. Pictures and text
converge into unified wholes, achieving a poetic effect. Over the years, having taken
a number of photos whose images continue to be compelling to me, I wondered if my
attraction to those particular images came from a desire to get back in touch with some
personal experience, some philosophical quest. I began to write text juxtaposed with the
images, combining memories with the broader context of history and politics. Thus the
words carry one story and the images carry another parallel one. The correspondence
between image and text, created in this manner, leads to an effect independent of the
image and text in themselves.
The concept here is the nitty-gritty lived experience of an Afro-Puerto Rican man, raised
in Spanish Harlem, who spent formative time in Paris in the Fifties and later, whose life at
different times intersected with the political upheavals of the Sixties, the creative energies
of Manhattan’s Downtown scene in the Fifties and Sixties, and the global adventures of
itinerant artists.