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.

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.

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

1810 W. Cortland photo by Kristen Heldmann, noted only to avoid the confusion ensuing from taking a photo of a building where a guy who took photos of buildings lived

This past fall I became familiar with the life and work of Richard Nickel, a Chicago photographer who made it his life work to preserve elements of Louis Sullivan buildings being demolished throughout the city in the mid-20th century. He photographed the buildings and collected physical artifacts from the demo sites, terra cotta ornament and even staircases. He died quite young while he was doing just this in the Chicago Stock Exchange building while it was being torn down. He was buried under rubble for a few weeks before his body was recovered. The arch of the Stock Exchange is on display behind the Art Institute next to Grant Park, and it stands as a quiet monument to Nickel, I think, for people interested in Chicago history and Nickel’s important work.

There’s a new book out on him as of 2007 and a couple of his photographs were displayed in the Lasalle Bank collection at the Cultural Center this past fall, but his work is primarily seen as architectural and technical, and not in the tradition of art (although he did study under Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan at the Institute of Design), so as a photographer, he falls into a subdued place in history. The earnest story of his life and his gorgeously-correct large format photographs were captivating to me and the work done by Richard Cahan and John Vinci make the work very accessible in book form. I was enchanted enough by what I had read to find the building that he bought and renovated before his death, the only place he had called home outside of his parents’ house in the suburbs (which isn’t to say that he was unworldly - he had been a photographer for the army after WWII) to see what had become of it. I took my meager, distorted 35mm shot of the building (seen above) and noted with some amusement that the recent tenants of the storefront had been photographers.

I was reminded again of Richard Nickel’s home again tonight after a fellow city resident and photographer, Noah Vaughn, noticed my photo of it. Wondering how one might find this photo in the archives of my photostream, I googled “Grimm’s bldg,” the name that one sees in the ornament above the second floor. I sadly found this .pdf file that indicates that this building is in danger of demolition itself. It’s one of 7 buildings on preservationchicago.org listed as most endangered.

This is, of course, terrible news.  I hope it doesn’t get torn down, but I’m glad to have seen it when I did should it ever make way for some characterless condo complex not unfamiliar to the changing neighborhood.

Read more about Richard Nickel on NPR.

I’m really looking forward to visiting this exhibition next week at the Smart Museum:

Aaron Siskind, Chicago, 1949, Gelatin silver print, mounted. Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Gift of the Illinois Arts Council, 1976.140.

“Aaron Siskind (1903–1991) is best known for his abstract photographs, often of natural forms or architectural features that were manipulated in order to produce unfamiliar images. Siskind minimized the importance of literal representation by carefully distinguishing between a photograph of something—which is a distinct, flat object shaped by the photographer’s perception—and his fully three-dimensional subject or “the thing itself.” This intimate exhibition combines key images from Siskind’s first forays into abstraction with the artist’s own eloquent writings in order to examine the tension inherent in his work: between the artist’s perception and the literal representation of an object.”