Thank you for mentioning the book. I am grateful for having received the assignment to photograph the parks in the City for this book. Many of these parks and neighborhoods were unfamiliar to me, and I enjoyed visiting them. 

Taking the photos for this book was a bit of challenge. How do you create an interesting photo of a park that is little more than an unadorned rectangle of grass? How do you show the character of park? I must admit that many of my earlier photos for the book were dull and uninteresting, even depressing! I needed to study composition and subject matter more, and apply it to this project, and I eventually found inspiration in 19th century Romantic landscape painting, among other things. Were I to do this project again, I’d be sure to include more people and animals in the photos: Mr. Tiemann’s photos of county parks are particularly good with showing people enjoying the parks, and I think my cover photo is a happy example of the kind of joy that ought to be found in a good park.  

Regarding the current condition of the parks, I think that “benign neglect,” as is often found in the City parks, is not necessarily a bad thing, and is likely better than active, but misguided redevelopment. A neglected park can simply wait for better days for improvement, and if the park was initially designed and built well, its recovery can be fairly easy, if that is what the people want.