I completed two series on the burnt-out district of Lisboa, Portugal, beginning somewhere around 1994 (the devastating fire occurred in 1988). The opportunity presented itself to me spontaneously. I saw in the ruins a fascinating design and play of light that were very similar to the most famous etchings of all times, by the Italian Piranesi, known in English sometimes as the Imaginary Prisons (1761). The etchings have inspired choreography, painting, and recently musical accompaniament (Yo-Yo Ma) over the centuries. In a book by Frank and Dorothy Getlein, The Bite of the Print, we can read the following excerpts about these etchings that point out their importance:

´His work was in part the inspiration of that curious English vogue for constructed ruins as landscape decorations´.´Piranesi´s contribution to what has been called the “grammar of the film”was the invention of the angle shot´…´Piranesi stood off to one side or theother, thus getting away from a blueprint type of elevation and automatically increasing the visual drama. He also anticipated the movies´ use of the high angle and is said to have made some drawings suspended in a sling over the subject, rather as the camera is manipulated today…´.

´He also exploited the dramatizing effects of extreme light and dark contrasts´.´Piranesi manages to have things all ways in order to increase the sense of diffident doom, a sense that permeates the Prisons and the work of twentieth-century writers as different as Kafka and Eliot´.

These etchings have served me as inspiration and point of departure, but this does not imply a dependence or absolute servility. It does demonstrate that I consider art to be a process, first of all, and that modern expressions, as inventive and original as they may be, should not cut off arbitrarily their sources. In other words, we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater, as is the practice all too often these days.This series was taken in Lisbon's traditional Chiado quarter, after its devastating fire, and took its initial inspiration from etchings by Piranesi in the XVIII, known as the 'Carceri'. or imaginary prisons. The series begins with the initial support structures of the damaged buildings, later covered in netting as the reconstruction began, and ending as the work is uncovered, and shops appear. Here are six selections from that series. Please click on any image for a more detailed view.

Design I	Structure I	Structure II
Netting Reflection I	Shop Reflection I	Elevator I