Wednesday 23 April 2008

Portuñol in Bridgeport

Another day where I had to spend an inordinate time in Chicago for a couple of meetings in the afternoon. An outing was in order – an outing as it seems that “wander” has been usurped by other flâneuses. This time was more decisive, due to the curiosity that stemmed from the last outing, I was thinking Pilsen but it ended up Bridgeport thinking Irish rather than Latino.

On the el platform awaiting the orange line train a woman obviously thinking that being brown I speak Spanish asks me directions. Wonder what country she thought I was from.

It was Joãozão all the way. Now that extended cold periods are behind us – maybe – it is the best annotating camera, and dread the day that it does finally be beyond repair as it seems to meld decent negative with something that while portable places me beyond the tourist when I run into people.

What was I thinking? I was thinking that Halsted Street would be a commercially driven as 26th street was. I was thinking taverns, individual shops, neighbourhoods. What I found was a street with empty buildings, chains and mini malls.

At a field house where I stop to use the facilities a man sees Joãozão and makes a snapping gesture with his hand as he laughs. Outside there is someone practising his bocce on a rock strewn pitted pitch. Some Asians are playing basketball.

The plan was Halsted to 39th then over to Racine back up to 35th or 31st over to Morgan up to 18th then west to the pink line station at Ashland. Hyperactively taking in Bridgeport and Pilsen in one blow.

Only a few things worth looking at in Halsted Street – Miracle Pharmacy, a couple of façades - I turned away from things and went into an urban formalism hinting that the walk was going to be a bust. 39th wasn’t much better here it was the purely formal.

Gave the Stockyards and Back of the Yards a pass as that would take me further from an el platform thinking next time.

Headed back north along Racine which seemed a bit better. There were things were being left. There was a bit of individuality in the housing, what shops I found were more local.

I also found that once foreign phobic Bridgeport with its Irish cops chasing everyone out of the neighbour was now more Asian and Latino than European – well except for the McMansions that were being built along the western edge.

I was trying to find other commercial streets in the area and looking for the mini gallery district that was supposedly growing, and due to this I was now zig-zagging north and south west to east.
Heading north In Morgan, I run into a man with a mean looking dog. I begin to cross the street when he says in two tongues nice. I head back we chat, he in Spanish me in Portunhol and feel that I must make a snap of him.

No.

Ok and I walk away.

He calls me back to ask what for. State that I try to photograph everyone who talks to me as a record, don’t really know why.

He relents and then asks if I can photograph his alley as he has to go to court to get the garbage picked up. I apologise for the anachronistic photographer that I am and state that Joãozão isn’t digital he should go to CVS and buy a one time use camera for his snaps.

He mentions gangs in the neighbourhood and how it has changed in the 17 years he has lived there.

I continue north passing the one sign of gentrification of the day – a café – in 31st Street.

People drawing with chalk on the pavement preparing for a birthday, some nice lawn ornaments but for the most part the walk is a bust. The area too regulated, too regular.

The save came from two encounters. One from buddy in Archer Avenue who thinking I am lost asks what address I am looking for when I was actually looking at the signage on a building that he happens to live in. He goes on a tirade about the city – live there all his life – how Daley is becoming more and more of a loon, signage tax, 10 ¾% sales tax etc. told me the history of the adjacent blocks.

Heading down Archer toward the el, stop to make a snap of a building’s grating abutting the Stevenson Expresway. Buddy’s opposite comes out. Betting that the area will pick up now that the orange line is there, he bought the building and watched his investment pile in the dough. He felt sorry for the long time residents but hey…

He thought that I was working for google streetlevel – had to tell him that they tend to drive rather than walk. During the talk he seemed to always worry about having to talk to tenants he saw leaving.

We parted Tried to do something with the Chicago River there. An attempt to document a hot dog stand before piling onto the train.

Monday 21 April 2008

Sunday 20 April 2008

department of vision

The photography department at the WGAS is scaling back a class that teaches “outmoded processes” from once a semester to once a year as it is no longer relevant.

Imagine the embarrassment I felt for the ART &LEISURE section of the NEW YORK TIMES when some poor misguided writer devoted a front page article to some backward photographer using one of those processes. Hope – for their sake it is under the “leisure” section.

Thursday 17 April 2008

Fearing that I would be as famous as I am, I at times thought of ways to make money case the career as a late 20th century/ early 21st century photographers didn’t pan out.

Seeing travel programmes of which at the time the title comprised of a number then something to do or see with a superlative thrown in – 5 great railway journeys of the world - seven great river journeys.

I thought on a smaller scale and wanted to do great bus trips in Chicago. At the time I only did two – 60 South Chicago – which is a great bus trip as it winds its way down to the Indiana border at Hegewisch past steel mills, under the Skyway and through three communities.

The second paled in comparison – 11 Lincoln Avenue - which was only great for its non direct diagonal route. In truth though the walk was better than the ride – as during my stint with Shitty 2000, I walked the length of the street within the city limits.

During Shitty 2000 I also took the 14 Jeffrey Express which was great as it left me off in the middle of nowhere but the journey itself was nothing to write home about.

I had to go to school on Monday as a friend who had escaped the States and had lived in Ottawa and now Montréal, was in town and was doing crits with the MFA’s.

Rather than sit about the school fuming, and riding the wave of getting out and about to make snaps, thought of the Blue Island 26th street bus and using this time as a way of seeing if the area heading west had potential. While I had Joãozão with me I was simply riding making visual notes – commercial areas, storefront churches, individuality in the houses, street furniture etc - and returning when I had more time.

It almost didn’t happen as realising that this could be done, I then tried to think of better routes. The Grand Avenue where one passes a giant Paul Bunyan saw this when Oberholzer and I made our way to Oak Park. It could be a triangular route, out Grand where it almost meets Fullerton then back Fullerton.

Maybe south again the South Side is so huge that there must be a bus that doesn’t simply take one of those boring straight as an arrow streets for hundreds of blocks. I could see the decisions creating doubt.

Took the Blue Island/26th finding all sorts of places along the way that would have potential, a few six corners, many local businesses. I could create another faux-pas as learned at the WGAS – be influenced by Gene Atget.

What got me off the bus – as I was in sort of a state of catatonia once again putting things off for later – was a giant cow outside of a Bank of America in Little Village. It was probably the least interesting thing I encountered.

The plan was to get down make the snap and get back on the next bus to continue. Since there wasn’t a bus coming I would just photograph the juice stands, then the stands selling paletas, then the dozens of shops that had torso-less mannequins selling jeans.

This was great, I keep saying that shops in city centres are too self aware and don’t allow for the odd juxtaposition, even the “funky” areas like Milwaukee Avenue in Bucktown, being rapidly gentrified try to hard to not look like downtown.

I could walk ahead toward the terminus and hop on the next bus that came. It is a strategy that I came up with wandering around west Balamer, seeing the bus a refuge in dodgy neighbourhoods – I forget about things like drive by shootings and the like.

Pretty soon it really wasn’t worth hoping on a bus as I wasn’t that far from the “el” – when another piece came to mind – I could take the pink line to the green line and do an homage to the republic flag – there is no white line.

Time was running out I had to head back to the Loop so turned North toward the Pink Line realising that it must have been a profitable morning as the only time I thought of things formal was at the station before entering.

An old morning walk on steroids.

There is a short window during the Spring when nothing is actually growing but the snow and snirt are gone. Couple this with the view from the train back to the Pissoir, where in order to restore the wetlands around the Zion nuclear power plant, non native trees were being cut down leaving a field, and a student’s waxing cynical on Spring – out to find rebirth and finding, in essence junk, I took Ubirajara out for a wander.

It was an attempt to control the “hyper” in me by making snaps of all the things that I keep meaning to do but instead head to the darkroom to make pixtures – a rediscovered ball park in ruins just over the Wisconsin border that I remember being part of a bar. Newly discovered as land in front was cleared for possible sale.

I wanted to get to the hidden ATV track.

This should have been done ages ago as from the train I see on the lake side the marshes and the flats out to the water. On the inhabited side there are, paint ball areas, places where people drive their ATV’s, abandoned tree houses and tyres. Both places are pretty inaccessible as the natural part is protected by the park, the unnatural by private property unless one can find the area to cross the tracks. When is it it still light out I see how I can get close enough to cross over into these areas. There are abandoned roads, I have seen people walking…

This is the time of year where they control burn the prairie, some years it has been pretty nerve racking for the houses nearby as the control seemed to be lacking this year there was no sign of that.

I was hoping for a lot of ground water making reflections that would add to the strange selective clear cutting of the trees in the water and hoping that the white of the trunks would play off the dark of the water.

This is the time of year where one has to watch where one walks. It is mainly trying to cross the puddles on the path, but there are other surprises – the first snake of the year sunning itself in a dry spot, a carpet of fur without the animal who used to use it, the odd skeleton.

The only ones out were those who were doing the culling of the trees. In the near distance there were bonfires and backhoes.

Wanted to make a circular walk but found myself stopped by the groundwater that while flowing was still more of a lake than a puddle. Crossed the tracks into Winthrop Harbour where people worrying about their property wouldn’t allow the beer bottles and fritos bags that seem to appear as the first harbingers of the season.

Wednesday 16 April 2008

Incident on the train

What seems to be a mother grand mum and daughter are waiting for the train back home finishing what seems to be a day in Chicago, they pull out their digital cameras to photograph themselves and the child.

A man sees this and yells ‘don’t take my picture’, as if they were paparazzi searching out losers living on the North Shore.
It is 6PM, I am racing for the train so that I don’t have to hang around until 9:35 when the next train north leaves. While the temperature doesn’t show it, there is a spring light. There are times when I still need my sunglasses depending on what side of the street I am on.

I am leaving once again reminded what an anachronism I am as I have just come from someone proclaiming that it is irresponsible to do Winogrand type photographs in the early 21st century. It is usually said like this “I like…but to champion him to-day…” It has been a good week for this as someone else mentioned all to embarrassed bobbing heads in the department – that people who call themselves photographers are living the past and are bent on mysticism. I mumble people who call themselves artists are both pretentious and vague. The embarrassed bobbing heads come from their agreement – for it is the proper opinion to have - but the realisation that there I am that dinosaur who does what one isn’t supposed to.

What this would normally have me doing is making Winogrands to spite them. To-day I just pitied them. Walking by the first national bank building there was this beautiful two directional light on the street. It bathed everything in this soft glow that from the direct sun and the light reflecting off the glass façades and back down onto the street from the opposite direction. At times this light would reflect once more off the windows at street level giving this strange theatrical feel remember the first time it was brought to my attention when J B-H was in Chicago and we stood at Randolph and Clark to use the light on the passers-by “you face that way and I’ll face this. It’ll look like we are talking but both can make photographs”.

It didn’t last long. Five minutes? But it made me proud to be an anachronism.

Friday 11 April 2008

It seems that an artist in waiting, reading the last entry somehow thought that Chicago had formed a new currency unit in the apple – when in effect it was the snap that buddy said would be worth a million dollars.

Nevertheless this artist in waiting – also named Davis but no relation and it is rumoured that she is a Davis by birth - in trying to be an escape artist in NYC is now marling about some southern city trying to find apples to pay for a place in DUMBO when her partner shakes off his fossilised existence and becomes a philosopher in waiting in Manhattan.

This should be enough to pay for a place in TriBeCa…

Tuesday 8 April 2008

monroe between dearborn and state

look at that will you?!
he’s taking a picture of that apple
that’s a great picture
that’s a million dollar picture
yep a million dollar picture
you got a million dollar picture there.

when i get it i’ll split it three ways with you.

Sunday 6 April 2008

On 1 April – the date is appropriate if it is called ALL Fool’s Day – the WGAS changed our 401k plans from TIAA/CREF to the more personal and endearing sounding Diversified Investment Advisors.

I am guessing the reasons:
TIAA stands for Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association
CREF is College Retirement Equities Fund
I think the guilt of not even trying to life up to either teaching or college on the part of the WGAS warranted the change as the new name fund managers name better fits the philosophy of an institution where everything is being outsourced.

Looking through the choice of funds, I find that no longer have the choice of trying to assuage my guilt by placing funds in a socially responsible mutual fund – one that stays away from guns, tobacco, champions sustainability etc. – and must help out the arms race if I have any hope of retiring.

How ironic that the socially aware artists/professors, who rally against globalisation and exploitation – although no one seems bothered that the cost to attend is so prohibitive that the working class is more or less excluded – have no problem forgetting that when it comes to their future well being.

Friday 4 April 2008


So I started to try to figure out when I stopped wandering before class, for there was a time - and light wise it is beginning to be that time again – when I would make this large arc on my way to the school. The walk was in the days when I could read The Guardian and Jornal do Brasil as newspapers and thus twice a week I would head up to Europa Books then over to Borders to buy them. I would get the Saturday Monday and Tuesday editions of The Guardian and the Sunday Editions Jornal do Brasil and the Independent. At 7:30 there would be just enough light streaming down the east west streets that depending on what side I was on it could increase depth and penetrate vitrines or completely blind me. The only nice aspect of the boring grid pattern of Chicago is that no matter how you go it is all the same distance, I would vary the route northeast to the bookshops then south to the school. Playing games at times I would choose the route by always going the direction of the green light other times trying to avoid all traffic signals. It was, however, and excuse to get out and gawk.

If for some reason I arrived earlier I would venture even farther north.

It was a good light for plastic camera snaps.

It also afforded me quiet time.

It did stop, though and I am not sure that it was due to the papers having on-line editions and thus not bothering to ship expensive paper across the ocean, I do remember there was a brief period when there was what looked like a photocopied version of The Guardian where new adverts would be placed to pay for the cost of the photocopying. It could have been in the autumn when a combination of the triumph of the new technologies coincided with leaving the station before the sun actually streamed down the streets.

Quiet time then was coffee on the steps outside until the cold forced me in.

Thursday 3 April 2008

I am finding that having the convenience of carrying everything with me isn’t. In the past when everything one needed for the day wasn’t in a laptop, my burden was less and my world was fuller. Forgetting that my knees ache all the time and I am sure that I have lost a centimetre in height due to all the necessities of modern life, I know that my work is suffering.

It was a Saturday and thus I was freed from carrying the paraphernalia that accompanies to the WGAS on a teaching day. My load was decidedly lighter and due to this I could wander. In truth I could wander with the weight it isn’t the weight that is the problem it is digging through the carrier bag to find the camera that is the problem. It was easier not to to stop to keep walking slowing the keep walking became walk faster and I would be at security before I knew it. I had trained myself not to see anything on the way so I wouldn’t have to find a reason why I wasn’t stopping to make that odd snap.

This could be the fact that I am between technologies, I still take actual notebooks and pens but also a laptop as it can be a risk not bringing it. It has the slides – or whatever one calls what has replaced slides now, it is the projector something that I would get from the cage at school, and random bits of work for those moments.

I would prefer to ditch the laptop and place my hopes in the technology embedded in the WGAS but there have been times when the programmes haven’t been compatible.

This was a Saturday – actually a Saturday of over a month ago as I am computered out, I am so tired of being in front of one that when I don’t have to be I am not. Emails go unanswered, entries unwritten, I have stopped making books as I seem to be sitting in front of the screen all the time – there was some meeting at school, I could write notes instead of hearing the constant clacking noise of keyboards in the new distracting way of taking notes during interviews. At lectures I hear the faint click clacking in the background and I wonder if the scratching of pen over paper is equally distracting. Freed I could load the bag with Joãozão and wander. Being at the mercy of the trains which arrive early I went wandering to the school on routes that I usually don’t take but also along routes which would be rife with people on week-days but empty early Saturday morning. Photographed all the delivery stations in the alleys with their kiosks empty, photographed the milk crates the homeless sit on when not selling Streetwise as well as their caches of belongings. I find ladders in the middle of Michigan Avenue, hard hats in planters…

It wasn’t the lesser weight that freed me up it was the lack of things that have to be packed just so for them to make it to school and my laziness in trying to dig through all of that to try to make a snap of something that really shouldn’t require all that effort.

I became spoiled not only did this day hold potential but the following Sunday was also quite productive. My hunch was now that I didn’t have to struggle to get to the camera I wasn’t blinkering myself, I was walking more slowly and allowing situations to be experienced – no I cannot wear it around my neck as I now carry the bag sherpa style and it would constantly hit the buckle which would hit my chest, having it slung over one shoulder would have it slip off when I bent over to make a snap.

This has been happening more and more. I find that I don’t need to carry everything. I am having computer free days – although this isn’t one of them – I am giving up my commuter reading time to write this entry so as to live up to my bimonthly rating on some mendacious blog list. This minor step means that the camera comes out when I leave the station and while it is hard not to race walk when all about me are, I am now actually stopping and snapping closer to the way that I used to before it was possible to carry everything in a neat little package even if you didn’t need it.