When summer begins, I become sad. It would seem that the luminosity, even if it is acrid, of summer hours should delight someone who doesn’t know who he is. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t delight me. There is too sharp a contrast between external life, which overflows, and what I feel and think, without knowing how to feel or think — the perennially unburied body of my sensations.

Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

from Barrio

S. Prairie Ave in Bronzeville - photo by Micah Marty

I picked up this enormous book from the 6th floor of the Harold Washington Library last week called City 2000. There are a lot of photography books on that floor, the Social Science and History Division of the library, because obviously, photography sits on the fence between art and documentation: One man’s portrait is another man’s photojournalism… and it can often be the same man.

Anyway, this book is just what I’m interested in right now, Chicago-based photography. The strange thing about living in Chicago is that on a national scale Chicago seems to be ignored in a large part, overshadowed by N.Y. and L.A. and other smaller cities that have interesting scenes. The things that are distinctly Chicago in nature can often produce an aesthetic not unlike that of New York, especially in street photography and architectural photography. The two cities look a lot alike in the brick.

City 2000 was a project executed in the year 2000 (the year of all-Flash websites) to document Chicago at that point in history by some of its notable photographers. There are 199 photographs in the book by 39 photographers. There’s also text provided by 15 authors regarding the project and regarding the city. The corresponding archive on UIC’s library website includes work from over 200 photographers that participated in the project, including some audio and video files, that documents every neighborhood in Chicago in some way (use the search field to find places that interest you!). That’s where I was able to find a copy of this photo, which serves as a cover to the book.

I love this photo by Micah Marty, because it captures something I wanted to capture about the South Side of Chicago - those open spaces next to buildings that were clearly built for compact architecture. Three-flats like this are usually seen built into a neatly-packed row of three-flats with small gangways in between each building, and that kind of neighborhood justifies their narrow layouts and cramped bedrooms (that often barely fit a bed). But take away that context and you happen upon this stark scene — the drastic lines of the residence demand your attention, and you can’t help but kind of daydream about what goes on in the empty lot on the corner. Often there are foot paths carved into the grass that you can see from the elevated train, people wearing away the grass to make the walk around the corner less square.

Carl Heldmann talks with Lou Manfredini

Here’s the follow-up to my photo post about going with my dad to do a taping of HouseSmarts TV to talk about his book Be Your Own House Contractor. House Smarts has updated their website with the segment from my dad’s interview and it’s totally neat!

If you’re in the Chicago area this Sunday, please stop by 3039 West Carroll between 4 and 7 for the opening reception of Christopher Michlig’s  solo exhibition at Devening Projects + Editions.

Chris is my brother-in-law and has gotten really great press over the last year, including a review in Artforum. He will be at the reception, and he’s super nice and articulate about his work. So, go!

Here’s the gallery write-up:

devening projects + editions is pleased to present Christopher Michlig: MAN MAN MAN in his first solo exhibition in Chicago featuring new collages and a sculpture installation. Made from reconstituted fluorescent street posters whose advertised events have passed, the collages in MAN MAN MAN cut away all but one detail of the publicized occasion. The collages produce a constellation of fragmented information that oscillates between direct communication and abstraction. Whereas each individual poster previously conveyed concrete information relevant to a particular event, the new collages collectively insinuate a woolly, indefinite event.

Accompanying the collages is a group of sculptures that dissemble and reform the structures of public communication: kiosks, street signs, etc. Redacted panels atop active supports, toppled signposts, jumbled letterforms, and crumpled paper bases lay bare the potential of these forms to shift the function of language from the communicative to the poetic.

Christopher Michlig is based in Los Angeles and works in a variety media including video. Michlig was featured in the exhibition Half-Life, curated by Thomas Solomon at LACE and Yellow, curated by Lia Trinka-Browner at the Fellows of Contemporary Art in 2008. Michlig was recently part of group exhibitions at devening projects + editions, CSLA Luckman Gallery, Los Angeles and 1000 Eventi Gallery, Milan. Michlig’s solo debut at Jail Gallery, Los Angeles, was reviewed by Jan Tumlir in the May 2008 issue of ARTFORUM.

© Joe Kirschling

My neighborhood, aka Jackowo, according to Wikipedia. I’ve never heard my Polish-speaking friend, who also lives here, mention it having a different name. This is a neighborhood in Chicago that even long-time Chicago residents have never heard of, so I tell everyone that I live in the adjacent neighborhood.

The red swing has been disassembled in the unprofessional sense of the word. The ropes are still there, dangling from the beam. Pictures forthcoming if my Holga worked this morning on the way to work. I’m pleased that we had our moment with it.

Last October, Kodak discontinued their line of surface “E” Supra Endura papers due to the “declining sales” of this particular paper. I, however, didn’t know this and had recently started to use E as an alternative to my normal N surface when Central Camera had been out of stock. I found it a most agreeable and even preferable alternative. Well, those days are over, because Central Camera in Chicago is officially out of this discontinued surface and we’ll all have to make do with its close match, the semi-matte surface N.

While this is a.) old news and b.) not very interesting to most people (unlike renaming the Sears Tower - wth?), it was undereported! As color darkroom users, we don’t have all that many options as it is. (How I would love to be able to purchase a pack of color paper smaller than 8×10.) So for those of you with some E left in your yellow boxes, enjoy it while it lasts! (Although it appears that it’s still available at other vendors in unknown quantities.)

While out riding my bicycle last week, I happened upon a strange sight/site underneath the train in Bucktown: a wooden swing dangling from the el tracks. What else need I say? It’s perfectly placed, across the street from a small and well-used park, near the intersection of Milwaukee and Leavitt. It’s hung slightly crooked, but swings well enough as Greg and I found out, hopping off our bikes for a swing with our helmets still on, feeling a little silly but evoking smiles from passersby. And it’s quite thrilling to be swinging from the el structure as a long train passes you overhead. This is definitely the kind of place that I consider to be a tourist attraction.

Read more about the redswingproject at redswingproject.org

Marlaina Read was kind enough to include me in the first issue of her new online publication. Noel’s in there too.

Download the premiere issue of INVISIBLE CITY at http://www.invisiblecity.org

Contributors: Marlaina Read Alexander Binder Aaron McElroy Olivia Locher Noel Ruiz Alejandro Cartagena Michael Scaringe Kristen Heldmann Benjamin Reich Carey Macarthur Chih-Han Hsu Jason Reed Jordan Tate Daniel Farnum Susanne Willuhn Grace Kim Bruno Roels Aaron Joel Santos Carlo Dulla Stephen Donnelly Andrew P. Marcinek Nicola Trethowan Vladimir Zykov M Kitchell Kris T Kahn

I will be honest here and admit that the only reason I send mail is to receive mail. I mean, what’s better than getting art and letters made from tangible materials in your mailbox, right? With this in mind, I can’t express how much I value two photographer friends that I’ve made who live on opposite ends of the country and who occasionally grace my mailbox with incredibly generous donations to my aesthetic life. This week, I was happily surprised to find such a package from Shannon, filled with a hefty stack of prints varying in size and color, including a large helping of 11 x 14 prints.

Shannon’s work has been inspiring me for years, before I knew how to use a camera, and even when I wasn’t able to view it on the internet or in my hands, it was there as an idea in my mind. She is so fluidly a documentarian and experimental. She shows no fear, which as a photographer, I think especially, is an obstacle I have had to overcome and still do. She makes more work than anyone I know, save for our friend, Noel Ruiz, but without the kind of warped and incessant need to show everything that I know I feel on  a daily basis. And I admire that (assuming it’s even true), because I really no longer know what it’s like to be left alone with your art. To sit in a room with it and not have the room be a portal to other peoples’ opinions. There’s sincerity there in that space, and a beauty that is imbued in the images from knowing them so well.

Shannon has several bodies of work so it’s hard for me to begin writing about my thoughts regarding the images. I see them individually, but also how they fit into the larger ideas. And I don’t know how much I should share, as it’s not up on the internet for everyone to see. Maybe one day she’ll let me go through her work with her and we’ll make a website and write about it. Her self-portraits, her work in the Tenderloin, Nepal, her images of childhood, her paintings and drawings, her accompanying stories written about the images, and her newer photo project that I think I’m seeing a bit of in a couple of these images.

If I ever have any doubt about being a photographer, I can put it aside for the moment and trust in my friend Mimi, age 2, who was inspired to remember me all the way from Kansas the other day, after having only met me once at the tender age of 20 months , and who according to her mother asked her to “Draw Kristen, Kristen has a camera, draw Kristen’s camera.” Some of the most thoughtful people I know. At any age.

Copyright © 2009 Liz Kuball

Liz Kuball gets three crowd-sourced recommendations on the 20×200 blog. Were I on Twitter, I would’ve added a 4th. (Dare I join Twitter? I’m already swimming in my Google Reader.) Anyway, she totally wins. I was poking around her website and blog to find an accompanying photo, but ran into the trouble of finding too many to choose from! Liz’s blog is a must-read/see as she updates frequently with gorgeous images from her work in Southern California.

Copyright © 2009 Liz Kuball

From Bookslut:

A while back I was left in charge of my nephew, who was being fussy. I was exhausted, and tried singing the song that was echoing in my head to the boy: “I am tired, I am weary, I could sleep for a thousand years.” It wasn’t until I hit the first verse that I realized I was singing “Venus in Furs” to a three-month-old.

My friend Joe and his awesome scanner camera were out at the Milwaukee Museum of Art on Friday taking portraits as part of Cedar Block Presents: Jan Lievens on a Jet Plane. See the rest of the portraits here.