An Oldie

Look!

Click that link to see an abstract photo I made 30 years ago.

I've been thinking of posting in this blog for a while now, so this is a good start. Nearly 2 years since I last posted. Not sure anyone is paying attention or will see this. Blogging in general seems to have given way to Instagram and other places where people can get instantaneous microdoses of dopamine. Maybe I'm old fashioned (or more likely, just old), but I think a little discussion, even a very brief one, can be valuable. Maybe that's why I prefer Flickr. It's image based, and generates more discussion and comments than anything I have ever posted on the better known social media. 

As for the link, it's to a photo I just posted to my Flickr account. An abstract photo shot in 1994, when I was a student studying photography. It was shot with a 4X5 view camera on transparency film.

Take a look, and if anyone sees this and wants to, leave a comment.

It's a Transition: Faculty Exhibition

Come see my work along with work made by my colleagues! 

The annual faculty exhibition at Moraine Valley Community College's Fine and Performing arts center.

 

Two Years

Little Village, Chicago

6/17/20

Little Village, Chicago

7/14/22

Here are two photos I shot in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, just over 2 years apart. The first one was made during one of the weekly photo shoots I started during the pandemic, which were basically a way to keep me sane during the lockdowns and get me out of the house safely. The second was shot last week, when I returned to Little Village for another shoot.

June, 2020, when the first photo was made, in addition to being the height of the pandemic, was during the period of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and incidents of looting. Little Village experienced some looting, and I saw several boarded up storefronts. In July, 2022, I only saw a couple boarded up storefronts, and those appeared to be due to building renovations. It also looked like some new businesses had opened, some streetwear stores with a youthful presence, a nice addition to the busy street full of markets, taquerias, dollar stores, and stores selling quinceañera dresses. 26th st., the main commercial strip in Little Village, has long been one of the busiest and highest grossing shopping areas in Chicago, and it was nice to see that it's still a vibrant area.

This summer, I find myself doing some much needed processing, as I sort out everything that's occurred over the past two years, and how that's changed my work life, personal life, and my creative work. I'll save the navel-gazing for my personal journal, and leave these photos as a visual example of change in a hopefully positive direction.

Three Pieces, One Source

 Here are three pieces made with various apps on my iPad which start from the same image. In this case, it's a photo shot from a girl's exercise book published in 1964.

Two Pieces, One Source

 Here are some pieces made on my iPad a couple months ago. Recently I've been playing with shooting images from old magazines, textbooks, etc. and making at least two different pieces from the same image. These are some of what I've made.

2 Versions

 Here are two different versions of a piece I made on my iPad a few months ago. Haven't posted them anywhere because I haven't titled them, and I thought they needed a title. Suggestions happily accepted.

Weekly Shooting Excursion XVII: Blue Island (Again)

For my seventeenth ‘keep me sane during the pandemic’ photo shoot, I returned to Blue Island, a suburb just south of Chicago I had already shot twice on these outings. My first of these weekly shoots was to the Olde Western area of Blue Island, and I returned a few days later to shoot on a rainy night. I shoot in Blue Island often because it’s close to home and easy to get to, and I find it kind of photogenic. It’s also good when time is short but I still want to get out and shoot, which was the case this time. With the Fall semester in full swing, I had to focus my attention on teaching, and any shooting trip would have to be a quick one. Also, I had hurt my knee, was painfully hobbling around wearing a brace, and didn’t want a longer outing with lots of walking (although I ended up walking for about 1.5 miles, until the knee hurt too much to continue). I chose the north end of Blue Island, which looks less like a small town than the areas I shot in earlier, and more like an aging suburban area, which, if I’m being honest, is exactly what it is. I love mid-century architecture, especially the low rise commercial buildings found on the edges of cities, and there’s a few of them in this area, so that made the shooting fun.

In case you’re wondering, I still don’t know what was up with my knee. I ended up braving a visit to a medical facility during the pandemic to see a doctor about it, but they didn’t think there was anything serious. X-rays revealed a completely normal knee. Wearing a brace for a while and icing it a couple times a day eventually took care of the issue. Guess I’m just getting old!

Here are my favorites from this shoot.

Weekly Shooting Excursion XVI: Bridgeport

My sixteenth ‘keep me sane during the pandemic’ photo shoot can’t really be called a summer shoot. It occurred in early September, still summer by the calendar, but fall was starting to make its presence known. This was also after the school year and full-time teaching duties resumed for me, and keeping myself busy was no longer an issue (after a summer filled with stress wondering if my classes would actually run, it was kind of a relief to be busy with work). After two weeks in front of the computer, countless emails, lesson planning and videoconferences, however, it felt really good to step away from all that and enjoy a few hours shooting on a sunny, quite warm but not too hot summer/fall cusp day.

I chose Bridgeport, a neighborhood on Chicago’s near south side. I had shot in a different area of Bridgeport a few weeks earlier, and have shot there a couple times in the past, and knew it would be an interesting area for me to shoot in. 

The central area of Bridgeport, where I shot on this outing, is a pleasant area with an almost, but not quite hipsterish/artsy feeling. Many artists live in the neighborhood, and there has been a strong artist’s presence in the area for decades. There are a couple prominent art centers in big old warehouse buildings in the area, and a sprinkling of galleries in storefronts. Even with all the artists in the neighborhood, however, it has never quite shaken its working class roots, or its unfortunate race issues. Chicago’s history is fraught with unpleasant race issues, and Bridgeport is an area which comes up often when discussing them. The location of the I-94 expressway, for example, along the east edge of Bridgeport is largely believed to be a purposeful attempt at creating a barrier between the neighborhood and Bronzeville, a historic area long known as a center of African-American culture in the city, which lies just to the east of the expressway.

While maybe lessened in recent years, and while it now is considered one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the city, unpleasant race issues remain in Bridgeport.

None of that was evident while I was shooting there, however. There were people in the cafes and restaurants that dot 31st. St., kids playing in playgrounds, and it felt relaxing wandering through the neighborhood shooting photos. Here’s my favorites from this shoot.

 

Weekly Shooting Excursion XV: Little Village…North Lawndale…Bohemian California?

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.

 

Made with my now broken Nishika camera.

The last photo shot with my crappy old 4-lens Nishika camera. The double exposure is from the camera jamming and exposing twice on the same piece of film.