New Book Release

Venice Without Gondolas
by Eleni Bastéa

A book of poetry, featuring photography and book design by Mark Forte

Venice without Gondolas

Architectural Legacies: Thessaloniki - Istanbul
Four Centuries of Interwoven History

A Photographic Essay by Mark Forte

Architectural Legacies: Thessaloniki – Istanbul, Four Hundred Years of Interwoven History was first exhibited at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico in 2012. This catalog includes reproductions of all original panels, and provides additional annotation. All together, the panels contain over 350 images taken, processed, and composed by author and photographer Mark Forte.

From the text:

I believe that our image of a city is like a spider web, structured with long radiating lines, which help us give meaning to the city by connecting us at the center to the greater world around us. These lines are rooted in ourselves and in our understanding of the world. We connect these anchoring lines with many lateral lines of gathered information and experiences, giving us a deeper understanding of the whole. Like a spider web, our image is strong, yet gossamer. It is mostly empty, in fact. And like the spider itself, we must constantly reconstruct our web, filling gaps and strengthening it as experience allows. Still, the web remains mostly empty, relying on our understanding of the world to complete the image.

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Polychromes

Selected Works by Mark Forte

Polychromes offers the ideas behind the process along with an annotated presentation of the complete "Legacies in Stone" series. In addition, you will a sneak preview of "Venice: City of the Sea - Polychrome Series II," a work in progress.

Back cover text:

When I photograph, be it buildings, landscapes or people, I am interested in uncovering a subtext in the subject that tells a story. The prints are my medium for retelling those stories.

In my ongoing quest to make my images more evocative, I have developed a digital processing technique, which I call polychrome. The resulting prints seem to describe a space somewhere between reality and the abstraction of photography. This intermediate reality is perfect for retelling the stories. It is my hope that in looking at this image collection, you will be able to discover these and, perhaps, other stories, as well.

80 pages / 109 images

Available in Paperback and Hardback

Duotones, Color & Transformations

Selected Works by Mark Forte

Back cover text:

Duotones, Color & Transformations offers an insight into the photographic work of Mark Forte. Trained as an architect, he initially used photography as a means of capturing and studying buildings, their details, and the context in which they existed.

Over time he realized that what attracted him about his subject matter lay beneath the physical trappings of the buildings. He could read a subtext in his subjects that told a story of space, time, and nostalgia.

His photographs are a means of discovering and retelling those stories, and in looking at the images in this collection you may just be able to discover these and other stories, as well.

80 pages
220 images, 90 full color, 130 Duotones

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About the photographer

Many years ago Mark Forte received his Bachelor of Arts in Visual and Environmental Studies and a Masters of Architecture from Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. Thinking that this would prepare him for a career in architecture he settled into the San Francisco Bay Area. He was right, but he was also not especially convinced that he wanted to be right.

Photography was always an adjunct to his architectural work, and after some thirty years he realized through his photographs that what he was after was not about architecture at all. It was about the spirit of place, of time, of memory.

Now when he is not writing for children or teaching students about the creative spirit of architecture, he fully explores this aspect of the art which showed him the error of his ways, seeking inspiration in his travels and in the beautiful high desert of his home in New Mexico.