Steve Gottlieb - Washington: Portrait of a City

PORTRAIT OF A CITYRevised EditionPHOTOGRAPHS & TEXT BY STEVE GOTTLIEB Published by Taylor Trade Publishing An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.rlpgtrade.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Distributed by National Book Network Copyright 2004, 2011 by Steve Gottlieb Book Design: Steve Gottlieb Fine art prints and stock usage of images in this book are available. Contact All rights reserved. Except for the use of brief quotations, no part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including copying, recording, transmitting on the Internet, or by information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the photographer/author. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gottlieb, Steven, 1946 Washington : portrait of a city / photographs and text by Steve Gottlieb.Rev. p. cm. cm.

ISBN 978-1-58979-574-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Washington (D.C.)Pictorial works. 2. I. Title. Title.

F195.G66 2011 975.3'0420222dc22 2010025876 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in Canada

Falling in love... the true story of a long weekend. Her name was Anna. We met right after graduating law school at the New York State Bar Exam preparatory course. She had sultry Mediterranean looks, a buoyant laugh and a smile wider than Julia Roberts.

Exhibiting restraint, I waited until completing both the course and the bar exam before pursuing her, which I did ardently. That summer we began to see each other often. Before starting our first post-graduation jobswed both accepted positions as associates in large Wall Street law firmsAnna and I decided to take our budding relationship to the next level... a long weekend out of town. Our trysting destination: Washington, D.C., a place neither of us had visited since grade school. Three days, alone together, to nurture our developing passion.

As I packed my suitcase, I tingled with anticipation. Alas, the emotional highlight of our trip was the packing that preceded it. For reasons inappropriate to air in a book of this nature, seventy-two hours together proved to be far more than our fledgling romance could withstand. And so, sad to say, Washington was the end of Anna. But every cloud, as the old saying goes, has a silver lining. In those three days I did fall in lovenot with Anna, but with the city of Washington.

Our nations capital was irresistible. Stirring monuments, beautiful museums around a grand mall, venerable government edifices, a wide river and intimate canal, a rustic city park and broad diagonal boulevards. Washington was so irresistible that after logging just one year at my first job, I said goodbye Wall Street, hello Pennsylvania Avenue. My plane landed at Reagan National Airport on New Years Day, 1974, amid a heavy snowstorm, adding drama to this transitional moment. A few days later I sat comfortably behind an oversized desk in the Old Executive Office Building. My office was so close to the White House that I could have sailed a paper plane from my fourth floor window onto the roof of the West Wing.

My new business card proclaimed: Steve Gottlieb, Assistant General Counsel, Office of Management and Budget, Washington, D.C., and next to it was an embossed Executive Office of the President logo. Two miles from my office I had taken an apartment on Massachusetts Avenue, a few blocks from the Capitol dome. I was now, officially and enthusiastically, a Washingtonian. OMB was the first of several legal positions that occupied most of the next decade. During those legal years, much of my spare time was spent nurturing my hobby of photography. My favorite subject was the city itself.

In 1984, ten years after Id first arrived, I showed my amateur pictures to a publisher; to my surprise and delight, he decided on the spot to publish them in a book. Washington: Portrait of a City, the precursor to this volume, was born. Many pictures from that book reappear between these covers. My passion for photography far exceeded my passion for legal work, to put it mildly, so I decided to use Portrait of a City as a springboard for a drastic career change. On the very day the book was published I handed an inscribed copy of my book to the Chairman of the Board of the corporation where I worked and resigned my job. I declared myself to be a photographer.

Ive never worked a single day as a lawyer since. Because of this experience, I considered Washington more than my home, more than my favorite city, more even than the subject of my book. It actually was a central character, a veritable co-conspirator, in my career transformation. After I became a professional photographer, Washington continued to provide favorite subject matter... the landmarks of the nations capital, of course, but other aspects of the city as well, for Washington is, like other cities, filled with people and sculpture, parks and airports, flowers and neighborhoods. In the course of my career, which has included two books about America, I have photographed nearly every major city from coast to coast, but none have come even close to inspiring my photographic impulses like Washington.

My passion for Washington subjects is hardly unusual, to say the least. Washingtons first prominent photographer was Mathew Brady, who most famously photographed President Lincoln and the Civil War battlefields that lie close to the nations capital. Since that time a century and a half ago, professionals and amateurs alike have trained their cameras on the city. More film has been shot here, I feel certain, than in any other city in the world. My own contribution, made over a twenty-five year period, is in the neighborhood of thirty thousand pictures. Like Claude Monet with his lily pads and haystacks, I view the city over and over, again and again, interpreting it under different light, new seasons, changed perspectives, altered juxtapositions.

To bring a fresh eye to this photographically familiar place is a creative challenge... and a great joy... a joy that is enhanced by sharing with others my vision of this city, a city I have loved ever since that first long weekend many years ago. Since writing these words for the 2004 hardcover edition, both the city and I have changed. I now spend more of my time teaching others to take pictures than taking them myself. The city has added an Indian Museum and a WWII Memorial, restored its Botanic Gardens, and built an abundance of new office buildings.

But mostly the city and I have remained the same. I still feel the same thrill when turning my camera on this extraordinary place. And the city of six years agoeven the city of a quarter century ago when I first lived herestill looks fundamentally the same. To the extent the city has changed, I think it looks even better than before. As you turn these pages, I hope you enjoy seeing the city through my eyes. and the impetus to get acquainted with places you may have missed.

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