My fifteenth summer ‘keep me sane’ outing was a really interesting and enjoyable photo shoot. I decided to shoot along Cermak Rd. (22nd St) west of Western Avenue, in what I assumed was Chicago's Little Village neighborhood. I had really enjoyed shooting along 26th St. in Little Village earlier in the summer, and was expecting something similar shooting a few blocks to the northeast. While there were some similarities, there were also some big differences. The first difference was the actual neighborhood where I was shooting. I thought I was in the northeast corner of Little Village, just west of Pilsen. Looking on Google maps, it showed the area as being part of Little Village. Looking in Wikipedia, however, I read that Cermak west of Western was actually in North Lawndale, the neighborhood directly north of Little Village. North Lawndale is more a struggling neighborhood than Little Village, and doesn’t have the buzzy street vibe that Little Village has. To further complicate things, when uploading photos from this shoot to my Flickr account, it labeled most of them as being in ‘Bohemian California’. Flickr comes up with a lot of odd neighborhood names (so does Google Maps), but I Googled ‘Bohemian California’ and found that the area was informally called that in the past, as it was once an area with many Czech immigrants (that also explains why nearby Pilsen, now a largely Mexican neighborhood, also has a Czech name).
The other big difference was in the feel of the area. While 26th St. just a few blocks south and west of where I was shooting is a busy street full of small businesses and shops mainly catering to the large Mexican population in the neighborhood, Cermak Rd. in this area is much quieter. There were quite a few businesses, but also a lot of closed storefronts, and there was considerably less pedestrian and vehicle traffic. It’s more run down than 26th St., and the farther west I walked, the grubbier the neighborhood felt. The street eventually became a couple block stretch of auto repair shops and weed filled lots before ducking under railroad tracks and continuing as a residential area.
Regardless of the name and the feel of the neighborhood, I found the area very photogenic, and shot a lot of photos. Urban areas always attract me when shooting, and the somewhat gritty feel of the area was easy and fun to shoot.
This shoot was also the last time I used my Nishika camera, a cheap plastic 4-lens camera made in the late ’80's to produce lenticular photos. I had my Nishika loaded with old, expired film, and was shooting photos, when it jammed while trying to advance the film. I tried again, and the entire film advance mechanism broke. I was a little disappointed. While it’s a cheap crappy camera I bought at a garage sale, I had rediscovered it this summer after not using it much for ten years or so, and was particularly enjoying shooting panoramic or mosaic scenes with it and joining those images in Photoshop. I may try taking the camera apart to see if I can get it to work again, but as it’s a cheap plastic camera, I’m doubtful that will be successful. Replacing it isn’t going to happen either, as crappy camera enthusiasts have discovered the Nishika. The camera I paid $2.00 for now sells for over $100 on Ebay, and it definitely isn’t worth nearly that much! Along with my favorites shot with my real camera, I’ve added a couple of the final photos made with the Nishika to the end of this post.
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