Architectural ‘Apparitions’
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They say that the true love of the French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres was to play the violin. So the expression “violin d’Ingres” emerged to connote the passion of an artist other than his profession.
For violist David Zimbalist, the violin d’Ingres is the camera. After bowing his viola for the day, he shoulders his Nikon and scouts Manhattan, where he has been working on a series of photographs of architectural abstractions.
Mr. Zimbalest was born in Brooklyn and educated at the University of California. He is an arranger of jazz. To play his transcription arrangements of early jazz of the 1920s, he founded the Speakeasy String Quartet, which includes two violins, a viola, and cello.
“Aqua,” taken on the Upper East Side, is one of his architectural photos. His series, which began one day when he was passing the Flatiron Building, now numbers hundreds of images. He is working on a book, called “Apparition City”; he tells the Sun the foreword is being written by the architect Maya Lin. Mr. Zimbalist can be contacted through his Web site, www.davidzimbalist.zenfolio.com.
