The photographic images were, not surprisingly, made with a camera. (A Hasselblad with a 50mm, an 80mm, and a 120mm lens.) And black and white (or is it grey scale?) film. The other images were made from single frames from a video camera, or scanned, snatched, or otherwise generated.

All images were then manipulated on Apple computers using a variety of Adobe software, including Adobe Acrobat, a customized version of Goudy from the Adobe Type library, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Streamline, and Adobe PostScript technology.

You get the picture.

I like the romantic cliché of the artist toiling alone in the field. Or, in the case of this body of work, toiling alone in twin eighteen-story skyscrapers. Romantic, but not at all true. This work would not have been possible without the generous support of a constellation of cherubim and seraphim.

First, there’s Lee Friedlander; I stole the idea for this project from his wonderful Cray at Chippewa Falls. (Victor Landweber’s query, “Of What is Adobe Made?,” is the reason this work isn’t titled Adobe Systems at San Jose.) This project would have been impossible without the support of Adobe System’s charming and charismatic Chairman of the board and Chief Executive Officer, John E. Warnock. He gave me permission to go anywhere and photograph anything from the boiler room to the board room. What an hombre! Given the realities of life at the top of the corporate food chain, I usually dealt with his personal assistant Mary Wright, one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met. She was instrumental in granting each and every one of my unbusinesslike requests. I’m also grateful to the many employees who not only tolerated the intrusions of a nosy artist with a camera, but who also went out of their way to help me. To be completely unfair, I’ll mention only one, the inimitable Russell Brown, who started my freefall into the digital vortex when he gave me my first copy of Photoshop almost a decade ago.

On a parallel plane, two other remarkable people were instrumental in making this work possible. Frank McGrath is my most generous patron, who has for years has sponsored me as an artist in residence at his San Francisco laboratory: an apartment, a kitchen, a shower, refrigerators full of salsa and beer, plus the keys to the laboratory bar and liquor cabinet. And finally, there’s Dr. Beryl Graham, who has held my hand through this entire endeavor. In more ways than one.