Pete Lit

Dorothy & John

I submitted this photo to the wonderful My Parents Were Awesome several weeks ago, but since I've gotten impatient waiting for the site to post it, I thought I'd just go ahead and post it here. That's my parents, Dorothy and John Anderson, during their college years in the late forties. And for the record, though my awesome but late dad is no longer with us, my mom is still thriving and remains quite awesome.

Kickapoo

The foolish young man in this photo is none other than myself, circa 1985. I'm standing on a railroad trestle, about a hundred feet above the Vermilion River in Kickapoo State Park, just outside of Danville, Illinois. It was a single track with no railings or any other safety features other than a single side platform halfway across which one could use to escape from an oncoming train. One had to walk across on just the wooden rail ties, step by careful step, with nothing but empty air beneath. Which, being daring and/or stupid, I did. Though the view was pretty spectacular, in hindsight it probably wasn't worth the risk. My buddy Fred was smart enough to stay off the trestle and instead just take the photograph, which he was kind enough to mail to me recently and remind me what it was like to be young and stupid.

Dover Book Shop, 1945

Photographs of Dover Book Shop, 102nd and Broadway in Manhattan, taken by Sam Gottscho in 1945. Love that stylish Midcentury Modern design.

(Via Shorpy, which has full-sized versions of these images here and here.)

End of an era

Kodak kills Kodachrome film after 74 years

I must admit, I'm as responsible for this photographic icon's demise as anyone. I never shot much slide film to begin with (in fact, I never owned a carousel projector) and have gone almost exclusively digital during the past five years or so. Still, without Kodachrome, the viewing of boring vacation photos will never be the same - crowding around a digital's tiny viewer screen can never replace sitting in a darkened living room watching a slideshow and trying not to doze off.

Yesterday's News

Lovely photograph by Jack Delano from 1940, in Brockton, Massachusetts. Those old Kodachromes can be quite gorgeous - this one almost looks like an Edward Hopper painting.

(Via Shorpy.)

Frank Jump, "Bay Ridge Subway"

I greatly admire the photographic work of my friend Frank Jump, he of the anachronistic images of old "fading ads" painted onto brick walls. This new image of his is particularly striking in the way it blends the old (the fading ad for the shoe repair shop) and the new (the woman on the cellphone, warily eyeing the camera). Very nicely done.

Found Art

I love all of the "found photographs" at bighappyfunhouse, most of which are funny, one-off snapshots. But I absolutely, positively LOVE this one (full-sized image), which to my (admittedly untrained) eye is nothing less than fine art - the framing of the neon sign, the angles of the sign supports and how the worker's body both complements those angles while being just slightly askew with them, and the tension of the worker's precarious position all make for a near-perfect composition. Reminds me quite a bit of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Underwood joins the family

My wife is the best. Last Friday morning my phone rang at the office, much earlier than I'm used to hearing from Julie every day. She and Maddie had decided, spur of the moment, to go to an estate sale, and she informed me that she had found an old Underwood typewriter, and asked if she should buy it for me. As I suspect is the case with many writers, I have a fetishistic attraction for old manual typewriters, though I had not yet taken the plunge. Trouble is, I had never studied the old machines well enough to know exactly what I was looking for, and Julie knew little about them. So she tried to describe it for me as well as she could, while I prowled typewriter websites looking for something that matched what she was describing, without much success. Finally I said, Oh what the hell, go ahead and buy it. Which she did - for just twenty bucks. Bless her heart - I know that old typewriters certainly weren't high on her list of things she wanted to at during that estate sale, but she still took the time to do so, just for me.

So when I got home that night, here's what I had: an Underwood Universal portable, from 1938. That's it in the photo above, and I couldn't be happier with it. It's in very good condition - it shows well and seems to be in perfect working order. (That website linked to above has their model listed for $450, but that's in completely refurbished condition. Plus that's their asking price - who knows if they'll ever sell if for anywhere near that much. Still, it looks like Julie made a very good deal.) The only thing that needs to be replaced is the ribbon, which was all but dried out. But the ribbon had just enough ink left in it to allow me to type out my first message:

I'm really looking forward to buying a new ribbon and giving the old relic a real workout. I'm toying with the idea of writing an entire new story, start to finish, completely on the typewriter, and mailing off the final typed draft to some literary journal without ever using a PC. I'll let you know how that goes.

("The Lovely Miss Underwood", indeed!)

Ghosts among us

Love this image, love this post.

The latest new baby

Over the weekend the three of us went to an estate sale in Naperville. Going through the house - a rickety 19th Century relic that's been in the same family for three generations - was interesting in its own right, but it's always nice to take a little something away. And I did just that, picking up the Beacon camera pictured above. It's a lovely little thing, with Art Deco touches and made (I believe) of Bakelite, which fits comfortably in the palm of the hand. It was made by Whitehouse Products, Inc. of Brooklyn, sometime during the early 1950s, and is admittedly more of a snapshot camera than anything a serious photographer would use - the lens is fixed focus and the aperture appears to be a little balky, so I doubt I'll ever actually photograph anything with it. (It also uses 127 film, which I don't even think is made anymore.) But it looks quite sharp on our bedroom mantel, right next to its new big brother. And it was only eight bucks, so I really couldn't resist.

I now officially have a collection on my hands.

Leon Lewandowski

Ron Slattery at Bighappyfunhouse has made a truly wonderful find: an extensive collection of photographs of Leon Lewandowski, who studied under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at Chicago's Institute of Design during the 1950s. Here's Ron's explanation:

Another wonderful find. A very good friend of mine recently sold me a large collection of photographs, proof sheets and negatives. The photographers name is Leon Lewandowski. He was a student at the Institute of Design here in Chicago. The fun part is, he studied under famed photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Leon attend the Institute from 1951 to 1955. He graduated with a Masters in Photography in 1955. In the 1950s there were only 14 other students to do so.

Mr. Lewandowski was one hell of a photographer. Many of his shots are from the streets of Chicago in the 1950s. You can see the influences of Callahan and Siskind in his work. The photos posted today are scanned from some of the proof sheets so I apologize for the quality of the images.

No apology needed, Ron - all of the photographs are great, even those scanned from proofsheets. Here are the first sets posted so far:

Leon Lewandowski - Part 1
Leon Lewandowski - Part 2

Big Steel, Beautiful Filth

Stunning image of a steel plant in Etna, Pennsylvania in 1941, by Alfred Palmer. (Nothing quite like Kodachrome, is there?) Quite beautiful, as long as you can conveniently ignore the fact that the site was probably one of the filthiest on the planet. This reminds me of driving past Gary, Indiana on I-90 many years ago, as the setting sun vividly lit up the plumes streaming out of the smokestacks of the U.S. Steel plant. I remember thinking how beautiful it was, even if what was making it beautiful was throat-clogging pollution.

(Via Shorpy.)

Drool...

Saw this photo on Flickr, and at first didn't even notice the iconic Lennon image, the books or the Viewmasters - but was drooling all the same.

Rainy day in Pittsburgh

Lovely photograph by John Vachon from 1941, for the Farm Security Administration. I can almost feel the raindrops splattering past my flimsy umbrella as I scurry for cover. Seeing this image reminds me to revisit John Vachon's America, a beautiful volume which I've owned for several years but haven't explored nearly enough.

(Via Shorpy.)

Lady Liberty on Lockdown

I haven't been doing much photography lately, so I thought I'd pass along this striking image from my friend Frank Jump. Lovely.

Cartier-Bresson in Lego-Land

Maybe I'm just imagining things, but lately there seems to be a huge number of Lego re-creations of fine art and pop-culture icons on the Internets. Most of them breeze right past me, but I really like this one, based on one of my favorite photographs, Henri Cartier-Bresson's "Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare". Very nice work.

(Via Coudal.)

Local Linking Love

My fellow Chicago writer and RAGAD contributor Spencer Dew gets the hallowed Book Notes treatment at Largehearted Boy, and displays his staggeringly diverse musical tastes. (Johnny Cash! The Clash! Shakira!) I've done a few readings with Spencer, and the antic energy of his performance simply has to be seen to be believed. Check him out, and the book (Songs of Insurgency) too.

At CCLaP, Jason Pettus raves about Joe Meno's The Boy Detective Fails, repeatedly invoking Haruki Murakami as he does so. Pettus' praise is even more impressive given the very lukewarm review he previously gave to Meno's much-loved Hairstyles of the Damned. (I had a few issues myself with that book, but really enjoyed it overall. I guess I'll add Boy Detective to my list.)

And on a non-literary note: Chicago, from 36,000 feet at night. Stunning. (Via Coudal.)

Thirstifying!

Whoa. Check out this gorgeous 360º panoramic of The Alchemist, a real charmer of a pub in Saint Malo, Brittany. So vividly life-like, I've got a sudden hankering for a pint of strong ale and an old book.

(Via Coudal.)

Chicago Cultural Center

This month's art exhibitions at the Chicago Cultural Center look quite interesting, especially these three:

Petronele Gerlikiene: Embroidered Myths and Everyday Stories
through April 6, 2008
Chicago Cultural Center, Michigan Avenue Galleries
78 E. Washington Street
Free

One of the most acclaimed, self-taught Lithuanian-American artists, Petronele Gerlikiene was born in Chicago in 1905 and died in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1979. She spent most of her life working in the countryside but, after retiring in 1972, she moved to the capital to live with her artist son. Fond of needlework and embroidery, she started to create her own compositions on curtains and rugs, with different trees as the central motifs, often surrounded by people and animals, sometimes referring to Lithuanian myths or simple daily life experiences. Organized by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs in cooperation with the Lithuanian Art Gallery Ciurlionis, Inc. and the Lithuanian Consulate in Chicago.

Women of Islam: Photographs by Rania Matar
through March 30, 2008
Chicago Cultural Center, Michigan Avenue Galleries
78 E. Washington St., Chicago
Free

Boston area photographer Rania Matar originally hails from Lebanon, where she has repeatedly returned in pursuit of images of her homeland. This newest body of black and white work provides an insightful, inter-generational study of women and the volatile issue of the head scarf in Muslim culture. Organized by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

Marcelino Stuhmer: The Recurring Dream
through March 23, 2008
Chicago Cultural Center, Michigan Avenue Galleries
78 E. Washington St., Chicago
Free

Marcelino Stuhmer's new installation of paintings presents a 12-foot diameter panoramic painting depicting the famous dream sequence from the Cold War film classic, The Manchurian Candidate (1962). In this scene, the camera pans 360º around the room, transforming an elderly women’s meeting on hydrangeas into a brutal Communist display of mind-control. As part of the installation, Stuhmer is also exhibiting a series of portraits of the American character actor Henry Silva, who has consistently been typecast in movies as an ethnic bad guy. While Silva's Korean Communist character Chunjin actually appears in the panoramic dream sequence, the portrait series entitled The Silva Screen, consists of manifestations of the actor, drawn from the numerous minority menaces he's played throughout his career. Organized by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

And I also see there's an upcoming exhibition by one of my favorite artists, Tony Fitzpatrick, starting in May that I'll be sure to attend as well. When I first starting working downtown, over five years ago, I was very diligent about regularly attending art exhibitions in the Loop (including the Cultural Center, the Illinois Gallery at the Thompson Center, and Columbia College) but even though I saw some great shows early on (most notably Gary Stochl and Jay Ryan) I haven't done much of that lately. I'll certainly be rectifying that soon, starting with these shows.

Ade and Deutch, Noted Chicagoans

Last Saturday's mail brought my latest book acquisitions, two rare and quite lovely titles from Powell's. The first:

This is a first edition of In Babel, a 1903 collection of pieces by George Ade, the renowned Chicago journalist. This volume is quite nice, with an imprinted cover so typical of the era, and other than a slight split in the front endpaper is in mint condition. I'm a huge fan of Ade (largely due to the tireless efforts of Ron Evry, who has been podcasting readings of Ade's works for quite some time) and I'm really looking forward to diving into this one. Here's Ade's wry preface to the book:

These little stories and sketches have been rewritten from certain daily contributions to the Chicago Record, now the Chicago Record-Herald. They have been assembled into this volume in the faint hope that they may serve as an antidote for the slang which has been administered to the public in such frequent doses of late. They are supposed to deal, more or less truthfully, with every-day life in Chicago.

The second is a first edition of Stephen Deutch, Photographer: From Paris to Chicago, 1932-1989, a 1989 monograph of the unappreciated photographer.

Viewing this rather hideous cover, you might take issue with my calling this a "lovely title" above. True, that cover does look like a cheap elementary school workbook from 1973, but the photographs collected inside convincingly negate the editors' dubious design preferences. Deutch was fairly unique in that he was simultaneously renowned for his commercial work, such as this 1950 image commissioned by Evans Furs...

...as well as for his documentary and street photography work, including this image taken on Clybourn Avenue near Division Street, also from 1950:

The book also includes numerous wonderful portraits of celebrities, including Nelson Algren (who was best of friends with Deutch), Joe Louis, Mahalia Jackson and Dave Garroway. Deutch got his start in photography in Paris in the 1930s, after marrying his wife Helene who was already running a studio at the time and subsequently taught him the art. Although the Deutches found themselves in one of the world's great artistic cities during its creative heyday, they didn't at all run with the in crowd. Deutch is quite tellingly quoted in the introduction:

"We didn't get invited to Gertrude Stein's salons. Jean-Paul Sartre didn't ask us to have coffee with him. We were just proletarians of the business. We had name recognition in a certain circle but certainly not in the literary or artistic ones. Life was the same way as it is for any working person. We had to be very diligent, put in lots of hours, and we enjoyed being successful. Bohemians we were not."

And though the Powell's listing didn't indicate as such when I made my purchase, the title page bears what very much appears to be Deutch's handwritten signature. Deutch was still alive at the time of the book's release, so it seems very plausible that this is indeed his signature. If so, it's a pleasant surprise which makes me treasure this find even more.

Merci, Monsieur Daguerre

Happy birthday to a great pioneer. From Minnesota Public Radio:

It's the birthday of the man who helped invent the art of photography, Louis Daguerre, born just outside of Paris, France (1789), who started out as a theater designer, using hand-painted translucent screens and elaborate lighting effects to create the illusion of a sunrise or a sudden storm onstage. But in 1829, he learned about a new technology that made it possible to use light to capture an image on a metal plate, though the quality of the image was poor. Daguerre set out to improve the process, and he came up with a combination of copper plate coated with silver salts that could be developed with the application of mercury vapor and table salt.

He first used this process to capture a series of images of Paris, including pictures of the Louvre and Notre Dame. The camera needed about 15 minutes exposure time to capture an image, so most of Dagurre's early pictures don't show any people. The one exception is a picture of a boulevard that shows a man in the foreground who has stopped to shine his shoes. He was the first human being ever caught on film. Daguerre announced his invention in 1839, and the images he produced became known as daguerreotypes.

The Past, Good and Bad

Sometimes I think it would have been better to live fifty or a hundred years ago, and other times I think we're much better off now. True, times were slower and simpler back then, but many of our modern advancements make our lives safer and more convenient. The photoblog Shorpy.com recently ran two old photographs of Coney Island from roughly the same era that capture that good/bad conundrum.

First, this 1913 photo of Luna Park shows a magical, fanciful dreamworld that so many public spaces strove to be in those days, full of bustling, vibrant energy. But then comes this photo of bathers on the beach, circa 1910-15, all of which seems crowded, dirty and worn.

I guess the past was far from ideal, just as today is. There's plenty of wonderful things we've lost, but plenty of equally wonderful advancements have been made as well, the most immediate of which being that in 1913 I never would have been able to examine these photographs from the comfort of my easy chair, likely hundreds or thousands of miles from their physical location. So I'll gladly take today.

"Union Station"

My photograph "Union Station" has been published as the cover of the latest edition of South Loop Review, the creative nonfiction journal of Columbia College Chicago. This issue's theme was travel, so I submitted what I thought was a very appropriate image. I was thrilled just to have them accept my photo, and absolutely delighted to see it chosen for the cover. If you're so inclined, South Loop Review can be purchased at Columbia's bookstore located in - you guessed it - the South Loop.

The Vagaries of Perception

Check out this photo.

A sorrowful, grieving, desperate old woman, right? Wrong...

...it's a mirthful, puckish, playful old woman.

Bighappyfunhouse always makes me smile, of course, but this is the first time I can recall being emotionally moved. As the site's proprietor Ron Slattery states in that post:

It amazes me
The way a simple photograph
Can change the way you feel

I couldn't agree more, Ron. You have my endless gratitude for sharing these two photos, and so many others.

Photo of the Week

Attic Window
Joliet
October 2004

It appears I'm insufficiently on the ball to manage posting a three-year old photograph even once per week. (The last "Photo of the Week" appeared two weeks ago.) Still, I hope you enjoy the late-afternoon image above, of the east side of our house. I like how the windows catch the deeper blue of the eastern sky, while overhead the sky is a paler blue from the fading sun. I've long toyed with renovating that attic into some sort of creative space. With windows like these on each end, it has plenty of good light, but also no heating or cooling. Which probably means it would be more of a financial investment than my frugal self is willing to undertake.

Photo of the Week

Cash Wholesale Produce Co.
150 St. Louis St., Joliet
March 2007

Since I'm getting back into the photographic spirit, I've decided to launch a new feature, "Photo of the Week." Every weekend I'll post another photo from my collection. Enjoy.

Fading Ads Come Back To Life

My old friend Frank Jump has been kind enough to post three of my old photographs on his photo blog: Union Station, Midland Hotel and Felt & Tarrant. Frank's arrival in the blogosphere has reinvigorated my passion for "fading ad" photographs -- I accumulated quite a few of my own during the late 1990s from Chicago and elsewhere, but writing, parenthood and suburban homeownership diverted my attention, and I never consolidated the images into one central online gallery as I had originally intended. I'm also vowing to start carrying my digital camera with me everywhere, especially since this year I've seen quite a few fine ads on various travels (Savannah, GA, Des Moines and Clinton, IA) that I would have loved to photograph but couldn't since I didn't have a camera with me at the time. (Inexcusable.)

During the next few months I'm going to scour my archives and assemble an online gallery of fading photos. I'm aiming to formally launch the venture by the end of this year. Stay tuned.

No Caption Needed

The University of Chicago Press announces a fascinating new release, Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites' No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. The press has posted an excerpt in which the authors discuss perhaps the most iconic photograph that American journalism has ever produced, Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother". The excerpt rather compellingly describes the story behind the creation of the photo and, even more interestingly, the mythos which arose around it and the subject's later reaction to being immortalized.

Longtime readers of this blog are likely already aware that I am an ardent devotee of the Farm Security Administration photographic project and collection from the 1930s and 1940s, which included works by Lange, Walker Evans, Jack Delano and many others and which I believe, in seeking to bring attention to the plight of everyday people during the Depression and its aftermath, is one of the finest examples of the ambition, humanity and compassion of the New Deal. Whether or not the photographs' subjects were at all aided by having their lives so documented, at least the enduring appeal of the photographs will ensure that these people will never be completely forgotten.

Although the scope of Hariman and Lucaites' book goes far beyond just the FSA collection, it looks like a very invigorating read. I'm definitely adding it to my list.

Algren and Shay Redux

Art Shay's Nelson Algren's Chicago (now overdue and headed back to my local library) may be out of print and selling for $30 and up online, but have no fear. In June, the esteemed Seven Stories Press is releasing a new Shay collection, Chicago's Nelson Algren which, despite its decidedly unimaginative title, sounds like quite the treasure trove:

Chicago’s Nelson Algren is the compilation of hundreds of photos—many recently discovered and published here for the first time—of Nelson Algren over the course of a decade and a deeply moving homage to the writer and his city. Read Algren and you’ll see Shay’s pictures; look at Shay’s photos and you’ll hear Nelson’s words.

The first book had only 117 photos, so the new one sounds like it's a much more comprehensive overview of Shay's Chicago/Algren work. The photos of the first book were wonderful in their own right, but what made them even better were Shay's explanatory captions which put the photos into delightfully insightful context. I hope the new book incorporates similar captions. I would expect it will, given how much Shay clearly relishes reminiscing about Algren.

The New Baby

No, it's not at all what you might think. Instead, the baby is this:

I picked this up last week at a garage sale in Joliet. It's a Mamiya C33 Professional medium-format, circa 1966-69. Other than an aperture ring that won't budge off of f4, it appears to be in perfect working order. (And I can deal with that minor inconvenience -- I'm sure it can be fixed, and it's not like the shutter is stuck on 1/2 a second or anything like that.) The woman I bought it from said it was her husband's, and he inherited it from his uncle (the same "Ed Deeter" who is so wonderfully immortalized on the label which you can see beneath the lower lens) who was a professional photographer of some sort. I love the fact that I know the camera's provenance -- it makes my own ownership seem that much more meaningful, as if I'm maintaining a legacy. The family I bought it from are moving and getting rid of all their unessential items, but even at that the woman said she was surprised her husband gave the camera up. Me too -- it's a beauty. Even if it wasn't operable, it would be quite lovely as a display item. I've long toyed with the idea of collecting vintage cameras, and this one is a nice start. It's also particularly fitting that my two SLR's are Mamiyas, both from the early 1970s.

Oh, and best of all, it only set me back $15.

Prowling garage sales is a lot of work, but sometimes it reaps wonderfully tangible benefits like this one. And intangibly, garage-saling is always nice, too, since it's a family activity that the three of us always enjoy together.

Algren and Shay

I quite like this summation by Michael Weinstein of the ongoing Art Shay photographic exhibition at Stephen Daiter Gallery:

A man of his time, Art Shay was the visual counterpart of Nelson Algren, both of whom tried to capture the life of Chicago's gritty streets, presenting a picture of a not-so-sweet, yet tough and ultimately self-affirming home. A heavy, plodding energy pervades Shay's black-and-white images from the 1940s and 1950s. Neither inert nor vibrant, Shay's subjects seem to move through their lives with dull determination that borders on stoicism, as when we see men wearing baggy overcoats standing in a police line-up under unforgiving lights, caught in suspense between submission and assertion. In Shay's blue-collar Chicago of yesteryear, there is not a fashion statement to be made and not a trace of posing; life in the raw is what Shay was after and this generous slice of his work shows that he succeeded better than he could have hoped; his images are cold blasts from a past that prolongs itself into the present beneath our glitzy veneer.

Though it makes perfect sense to me now, it hadn't occurred to me that Algren and Shay were fraternal twins of sorts, each having identical artistic sensibilities but choosing to express themselves in different mediums -- prose and photography, respectively. Lately I've been browsing Shay's collection, Nelson Algren's Chicago, from their old days of knocking around Chicago's mean streets, which includes a long essay by Shay of Algren remembrances. It's a fascinating book which is now (tragically, senselessly) out of print. I check it out from my local library every now and then for a quick fix.

In Their Easter Sunday Best

Easter morning outside church, Southside Chicago. April 1941. Photograph by Russell Lee.

These youngsters are dressed up much nicer than I'll be tomorrow morning, I can assure you that. Incidentally, this also happens to be the cover photo of a book I've been ogling for years: Chicago and Downstate: Illinois as Seen by the Farm Security Administration Photographers, 1936-1943.

(Via Shorpy.)

Shorpy: My Latest Photographic Obsession

That wonderful photo above is of the Waffle Shop (522 10th Street NW, Washington D.C.), circa 1950 by Theodor Horydczak. It came from Shorpy, a terrific photo blog I recently discovered, which displays a plethora of vintage photos from both renowned and lesser-known photographers. (However, the blog's tagline, "The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog", is a stretch, as many of the photos are from the 1940s and 50s. But I'm not complaining -- I love images from those decades as well.) I strongly encourage you to check it out. It's quite addictive.

A Most Pleasant Surprise

Every night on my way home from work, I drive down Cass Street in Joliet and pass a very nondescript building at the corner of Cass and Chicago. It's a small, two-story commercial building covered in white vinyl siding. (And not even decent vinyl siding, but the cheapest grade available.) The building has clearly seen better days, and can't seem to keep any long-term tenants. The last tenant I'm aware of was the Will County Democrats, who leased the first floor for a few months before last fall's elections. (Will County is pretty conservative -- about 30% of the population, quite incredulously, preferred the wingnut Alan Keyes over Barack Obama in the last U.S. Senate election -- so the Democratic party here obviously operates on the leanest of shoestrings, as evidenced by their sorry digs in this old building.)

Anyway, I never gave this building much thought until last Friday, when I drove past and was pleasantly surprised to see the building undergoing a facelift. The ugly vinyl siding has been stripped away, revealing a once-lovely, red-brick Victorian building with tall arched windows on the second floor (click image for full-sized photo):

Apparently the building was once a jewelry store, as evidenced by the "Hamilton Watches" sign at the corner and the two insistent claims (one facing each street) that "Your Credit Is Good Here":

Two-by-fours were nailed directly (and rather crudely) into the brick surface to affix the vinyl siding. I'm assuming the nail holes in the bricks can be repaired, but I'm not quite as optimistic about the arches above the second floor windows. A few of the arches were removed completely, and the others either have keystones which are damaged (first photo below) or removed completely (second photo below) to accomodate the two-by-fours.

I'm hoping the missing arches and keystones are stowed away in the cellar. My initial research on this building (whose official address is 5 W. Cass St.) is scanty -- so far I've only learned that it was built between 1886 and 1891, per an old HABS/HAER survey. I'll keep digging to see what I can find, and will post more photos later on as the renovations proceed.

It's nice to see classic old buildings like this one getting a new lease on life. This is the second recent instance of a downtown Joliet building being shorn of its hideous 1960s facade to reveal hints of its past glories beneath. Let's hope this is the start of a trend. There are several more buildings around downtown that deserve similar treatment.

Art Shay Exhibition

The Chicago History Museum (f/k/a the Chicago Historical Society) has an upcoming exhibition of the photographs of the great Art Shay, opening March 31.

The Essential Art Shay: Selected Photographs
Saturday, March 31

A retrospective of the nearly 60-year-career of Chicago photojournalist Art Shay will open at the Museum on March 31 in conjunction with the artist's 85th birthday. The exhibition of 140 photographs highlights the broad and varied career of this important Chicago photographer. Each photograph is described in the artist's own words providing visitors with insight into Shay's work and his relationships with his subjects. The exhibition includes Shay's freelance magazine work as well as his more personal photographs of Chicago and those of his friend and favorite subject author Nelson Algren. Celebrities showcased in the show include Marlon Brando, Judy Garland, Liberace, Muhammad Ali, John F. Kennedy, Ernest Hemingway, and Hugh Hefner. The Essential Art Shay: Selected Photographs will be on display from March 31 through September 23, 2007.

That photo at the left of the announcement is one of my favorites, of Nelson Algren leafing through his manuscript of Chicago: City on the Make in his old Wabansia Avenue apartment. I like the photo so much, in fact, that I have it framed and sitting on my writing desk at home, for writerly inspiration.

Morning Frost

This week's Arctic blast brought to mind this photo, from 1996. This was taken through the living room window of my old apartment in Roscoe Village. My building dated from the 1920s and still had, obviously, its original windows.

Dorothea Lange, Impounded

A new book of Dorothea Lange's photographs of Japanese-American internment camps during WWII has been published, under the title of Impounded. The images were drawn from a trove of nearly 800 photos "unearthed in the National Archives, where they had lain neglected for a half-century after having been impounded by the government."

"They tell us that conditions in the camps were much worse than most people think," said Linda Gordon, a historian at New York University who edited the book with Gary Y. Okihiro, a historian at Columbia University. Both also contributed essays.

Lange’s work unflinchingly illustrates the reality of life during this extraordinary moment in American history when about 110,000 people were moved with their families, sometimes at gunpoint, into horse stalls and tar-paper shacks where they endured brutal heat and bitter cold, filth, dust and open sewers.

Sounds like a much-needed reminder of one of the most shameful government actions in American history.

And lest you think that such a thing is just a dusty piece of arcane history, that unwarranted detention of American citizens and xenophobic hysteria are things of the distant past, I direct your attention to Guantanamo, the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Bill. The groundwork is firmly in place for all of that to happen again.

Century of Progress Photograph Sale

Whoa, baby--do I ever wish I had a few thousand bucks burning a hole in my pocket right now. The Museum of Science and Industry has de-accessioned thousands of art photographs, most of which were originally displayed at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. And they're now up for sale, with prices ranging from $300 to $4,000. Although on first glance I don't see any big-name photographers, there are oodles of beautiful images throughout the collection. Lovely indeed.

(Image above is "Contact" by Robert A. Barrows.)

In the Tribune...

One interesting item in the Tribune book section--A Hungry Heart, the final memoir of film director, photojournalist and writer Gordon Parks, of which reviewer David Thigpen says:

This retelling of his wonderful life, finished shortly before his death, is rendered with a marvelously confident and easy touch that reflects the satisfaction and confidence he earned as a barrier-smashing photojournalist, musician, novelist and film director.

As I mentioned previously, prior to Parks' death I hadn't been aware that he started out as a Farm Security Adminstration photographer, with many great images to his credit. (Here's all of his FSA images--click on "Gallery View" for more manageable browsing).

(Trib site requires registration...if not already registered, use "double@mailinator.com" to log on, with "123456" as the password. Thanks to bugmenot.com, as always.)

David Plowden, A Handful of Dust

Here's a stunning set of images from David Plowden's latest photographic collection, A Handful of Dust. I almost feel like I can reach out and touch these dying-or-dead small towns. Quite moving.

(Via Coudal.)

Eleanor Callahan on WBEZ

On WBEZ's "848" program, Edward Lifson talks with the charming Eleanor Callahan (pictured above, from detail of Eleanor, Chicago from 1949), the widow and frequent subject of the great photographer Harry Callahan. The Art Institute of Chicago is currently presenting a major exhibition of Harry Callahan's work, Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work. The exhibition runs through September 24th. I'll definitely be trekking over there one of these days--this one is definitely not to be missed. (The George Eastman House has a nice gallery of Callahan's works here.)

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Or more accurately, A Saturday Afternoon on the Rock River in Beloit. Lovely, indeed. Seurat would be proud.

(Via Coudal.)

Arnold Newman, 1918-2006

Arnold Newman, one of the greatest portrait photographers, has passed away at age 88. He perfected the art of "environmental portraiture," photographing his subjects in their own element (homes, workplaces, etc.), in sharp contrast to his contemporaries Avedon and Penn who stuck to their own coldly austere studios. An artist who fully engages with his subjects and the outside world--I can't tell you how much I admire that.

Check out an indescribably beautiful gallery of his portraits here. The Picasso and Stravinsky portraits are justifiably famous, but I particularly love the warmth of the portrait of theater critic Brooks Atkinson.

Archie FlorCruz

One of my favorite photobloggers, Archie FlorCruz (Whateverland), has an upcoming exhibition at Mode Realty in Pilsen, opening this Friday. If you happen to be in the area I strongly encourage you to attend. Should be a good one.

Gordon Parks: An Appreciation

In another Farm Security Administration-related item--because I can apparently never get enough FSA material--the Tribune has a nice appreciation  of Gordon Parks, film director, author and (previously unbeknownst to me) FSA photographer. Mary Panzer's piece relates the Northerner Parks' first exposure to Southern segregation, as prompted by FSA director Roy Stryker:

"I came back roaring mad," determined to expose this shocking corruption. So Stryker asked me, `How you gonna do it?' `Well, with my camera.'"

And he appears to have done just that, with particularly memorable photos of Ali and Malcolm X, among many others. Yet Parks also felt he was in a somewhat of a no man's land between the white and black worlds, not fully accepted by either.

"In one world I was a social oddity. In the other I was almost a stranger. ... Many times I wondered whether my achievement was worth [it] but now I realize the price was small. This same experience has taught me that there is nothing ignoble about a black man climbing from the troubled darkness on a white man's ladder, providing he doesn't forsake the others who subsequently must escape that same darkness."

Also news to my unenlightened self is that Parks was the first black photographer at Life. Quite the Renaissance Man.

(Trib site requires registration...if not already registered, use "double@mailinator.com" to log on, with "123456" as the password. Thanks to bugmenot.com, as always.)

Viva Sacramento!

Here's a fascinating series of photos of old signs in Sacramento and vicinity. ("Tony Baloney's Delicatessen" was particularly amusing.) I could probably come up with something comparable here by driving around Cicero and Berwyn for a few hours, but this saves me all that trouble.

(Via BoingBoing.)

What to Do? What to Do?

A dilemma...I'm sitting on credit of $70 Powell's and $50 at B&N, but my to-read pile is already at 30+ titles and growing, not counting literary journals. Sure, there's plenty of books on my wish list that I want to read, but do I really want to read them any more urgently than books I already own and haven't read yet? Is burying myself even deeper in unread literature really going to give me any more satisfaction? Not necessarily. So I've done absolutely nothing, just sitting on all that enviable credit.

Finally, though, over the weekend I had a eureka moment. I've always been fascinated by photo monographs, checking out numerous volumes from the library but rarely buying any due to the cost. I'm an amateur photographer myself (read: "unpaid"), and browsing monographs has always brought me enjoyment and inspiration. So, suddenly the name hit me: Gary Stochl. And I realized that a good solution to my readerly dilemma is finally buying some monographs that I wouldn't have ever purchased without store credit. I can enjoy them at my leisure, even with a TV blaring in the background.

Problem solved. Stochl's On City Streets: Chicago, 1964-2004 (a simply gorgeous book that I browsed through at the Chicago Cultural Center gift shop last year after seeing his exhibition) and In Focus: Eugene Atget: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (another beaut) are now en route from Powell's.

Atget, Before and After

Lens Culture presents a fascinating photo essay by Christopher Rauschenberg in which the photographer documents Paris scenes originally photographed by the great Eugene Atget. Though many of the structures remain, it's clear that the city's vaunted streets now lack their once-teeming vitality.

Having photographed all of these scenes, it is clear to me that the Paris of Atget’s vision is still there and available to eyes that look for it...most of all, you can see that the magical streets of Paris are now thickly covered with parked cars.

I'm not sure that going from horse carts to Renaults is necessarily a sign of progress.

(Link via Backwards City.)

Latest Publishing Attempt

Since I'm apparently not content to be just an unrecognized writer, I'm now trying to become an unrecognized photographer as well. South Loop Review is a creative nonfiction journal published by Columbia College Chicago which has solicited photo submissions for its upcoming issue, with a theme of "Journeys." Since I've never met a rejection slip I didn't like--in fact, I'm assembling quite a lovely collection atop my writing desk at home--I submitted this, this and this, all of which have travel connotations.

As always, I'm not holding my breath.

Walker Evans

A hearty happy birthday to one of my heroes. From Minnesota Public Radio:

It's the birthday of the photographer Walker Evans, born in St. Louis, Missouri (1903). His father was a wealthy advertising executive, and Evans spent most of his childhood in fancy boarding schools. He dropped out of college after one year and went off to Paris to become a writer. He spent a lot of his time at the Sylvia Beach's bookstore Shakespeare and Company, and one day he saw James Joyce there, but he was too shy to introduce himself. He didn't meet any other important writers, and his own writing didn't amount to much. He said, "I wanted so much to write that I couldn't write a word."

He went back to the United States, feeling like a failure. And then one day he picked up a camera and started taking pictures. One of the first pictures was of the parade honoring Lindbergh's flight in 1927. Instead of focusing on the parade itself, he focused on the street the parade had just passed through, littered with crumpled handbills and confetti.

He had felt so reverential toward literature that it blocked him up, but with a camera he could point and capture anything he wanted. The popular photography of the day was highly stylized, so Evans decided to go in the opposite direction, to take pictures of ordinary, unpretentious things. He said, "If the thing is there, why there it is."

I like the bit about photographing the litter and confetti, instead of the parade itself. Some of Evans' greatest photographs, many of them employing a similarly unconventional focus, can be viewed here and here.