Dallas: A Texas Star

Dallas has come a long way from its beginning nearly 170 years ago as the “Three Forks” trading post on the Trinity River, run by the city’s founder, John Bryan.  It’s now one of the greatest cities in the world: sophisticated, vibrant, and friendly, it’s an architectural, shopping, and medical mecca rich with successful businesses, nationally respected arts and museums, high fashion, higher education, entertainment, parks, and big-league sports teams.  And it just won’t stop. One learns about something new or renovated in Dallas every day—and it’s got more buildings designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects than any other place in the world.  

I’ve been privileged to live in Dallas and photograph it for five decades, and doing so has led to more than my share of special moments. There was the thrill of standing center stage to photograph a priceless chandelier, and having my own cart and driver on the campus of one of the country’s finest universities. Or of driving through parking garages looking for a high view—and sometimes being chased away by security because I had no permission. It was visiting deep, wild Africa, but with a Ph.D. guide and a golf cart while discovering the city’s own savanna at the Dallas Zoo, complete with wandering giraffes, elephants, zebras, ostriches, guinea hens, and deer.

Gear on my back, I climbed the ladder eighty-four feet inside the Parry Avenue Gate Pylon to photograph the new fountains on the Esplanade at Fair Park. With special access I climbed up another ladder five stories and through a hatch to reach the top of the Hall of State for the opposite view, toward the city: white fountains on the reflecting pool, as Dallas glowed beyond.   

They won’t let me on top of the buildings at Fair Park anymore, but the State Fair folks helped me photograph the new Big Tex by providing an agreeable man named Teddy and his lift. I couldn’t compete with Big Tex, but fairgoers got two shows that afternoon.  

Little-known sides of Dallas were revealed when I visited the Buddhist Temple and the Coptic Church as well as the Holocaust Museum, the Sixth Floor Museum, the Great Trinity Forest, and the Audubon Center—I became a tourist in my own city.

These memories, all documented with photographs, will live as long as I breathe—they represent what I love most in life. It has been a perfect way to spend my days in our splendid city.

Carolyn Brown