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.

Yesterday, walking out the door to the library of all places, the mail carrier handed me a priority pack from my sister containing the book she recently published in conjunction with her Jail gallery show called Of Course and Never. Happy to have something new and anticipated to look at while on the 15 minute train ride to the Harold Washington Library, I was also amused by the coincidence. I had been meaning to go to the library all week and had only just found the time; here was an entire book provided to me that was acting as a primer for my library experience, introducing aesthetic and philosophical ideas to the outing. As you can see from these images, or in larger form on her website, this series of paintings by Wendy consists entirely of images of library book stacks in various states of disarray. “Tomes slump in their shelves, books lie in unintelligible piles on the floor, and periodicals are strewn across aisles, defying the organizing principles that make their contents accessible.”

Of Course and Never is a beautifully-made book and the accompanying text by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer is superb, with thoughtful passages on the nature of books and libraries and a lovely introduction to Wendy’s paintings that gives the reader both a physical sensation of the work outside of reproduction and a literary starting point from which to view the images that follow.

One might think that a book accompanying a gallery show might only be a preview of the show, a kind of souvenir, but the number of paintings in the book is only one less than the show itself; it generously provides 17 handsome color plates. The overall effect of the paintings and the text make it a book worth revisiting often, I can already tell, and while I would be happy to add any volume of my sister’s work to my library (as she is both my sister and an artist whom I admire), I am doubly happy to have this book on my shelf.

More information on the book can be found here. Wendy’s solo exhibition at Jail Gallery will be up until March 14th. Read more about it on her website.

I know no pleasure like that of books, yet I read very little. Books are the entryway to dreams, but people at ease in life don’t need such introduction to enter into conversation with dreams. I could never read a book and give myself over to it; always, with each step, the commentary of my intellect or my imagination interrupts the narrative sequence. After some minutes I am the one who writes and the writing is nowhere to be seen.

Bernardo Soares, Assistant Bookkeeper in the City of Lisbon

One of my favorite bloggers, Kate Miss, and one of my new favorite photographers and bloggers, Lane Collins, both unexpectedly wrote lovely blog posts about receiving my mailing list photos. In addition to being talented artists and an excellent source of visual material, these two are just so nice and genuine. It makes my heart all warm to be a part of their good taste!

The mailing list photos have been mailed and should arrive shortly. In the meantime, check out these marvelous darkrooms shot by Richard Nicholson on a 4 x 5 camera (via JSTN). I’d like to make a crisper and updated image of my darkroom soon.

Political and historical reasons aside, this American presidency and campaign has struck me on a purely superficial level thanks to photographer Callie Shell. Potent images by Shell and others on the campaign trail are turning into potent images in the White House (Pete Souza is the official White House photographer) and offering some of what Obama calls the “new transparency” that he hopes to bring to the presidency.

I get my daily fix of Obama images on Livejournal Community, Obama Daily Pics. My boyfriend and I are also starting a wiki (that might end up being a blog) called Barack Obama’s Day.com, in which we hope to compile, with the help of others, in text the things that Obama does everyday, since everyone seems so concerned about it. I guess we are all fascinated by what a mess he was left with?

My pictures are about a captured moment, rather than about the person. They are about a feeling, and to that extent they preserve my children’s anonymity. They are disguised somehow. I’m showing a moment of life, not part of their personality, and to that extent they could be anyone.

Essentially, this is all a question of perception. It’s like this: someone shows another person a blot of ink and asks them what they see. They reply: “I see a German shepherd dog.” Then they show them another blot, and they see a springer spaniel, then another and they see a doberman. The first person exclaims: “Say, you sure do have an obsession with dogs.” And the second replies: “You’re the one who keeps showing dog pictures.”

Tierney Gearon, The Guardian, 13 March 2001

Photo from the totally awesome and thorough site of Eggleston Trust that I learned about thanks to Jeremy Okai Davis.

Harmony Korine interviews William Eggleston:

HK: What about digital photography?

WE: Don’t know anything about it.

HK: Have you ever shot with a digital camera?

WE: As I said, I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know, I might love it.

HK: You’re not opposed to it?

WE: There’s plenty of film out there, and quadrillions of cameras that use film-I don’t think it makes much sense not to use it. The thing that’s going out is the manufacturing of the paper. Incidentally, all these years my wife has told me that I’m color-blind.

HK: You’re color-blind?

WE: Yes.

I will not refrain from setting among these precepts a new device for consideration which, although it may appear trivial and almost ludicrous, is nevertheless of great utility in arousing the mind to various inventions. And this is, that if you look at any walls spotted with various stains, or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms. With such walls and blends of different stones it comes about as it does with the sound of bells, in whose clanging you may discover every name and word that you can imagine.

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.”

My friend Joe made a scanner camera.

To the extent photography is often thought of as a violation - as more intrinsically exploitative than other mediums - family pictures hold the artist more accountable than any other subject imaginable; at the same time, much more is at stake.

Photographing one’s own family is always more treacherous than photographing anyone else. We never just walk away from our families as we do from most of our other photographic subjects. Would many families let an outsider penetrate the security of domestic privacy? Will a photographer’s pictures of her children inadvertently burden the children when the pictures become part of our public culture? Will a child’s or parent’s feelings about the images conflict with the art maker’s ambitions?

Tom Bamberger writing in Blood Relatives: the family in contemporary photography