CHI DSC_6274_ 03-26-2024 - Laureen V. Connelly with her Cook County Assessor’s Office Certificate of Retirement plaque documenting 25 years of service.

Chicago Photographs - March 2024

June 21, 2024

Both of my kids played travel ice hockey growing up. It was time consuming and expensive, but it was some of the best times of our lives. A nice biproduct of them playing was I got back to the East Coast a lot and was able to photograph and see lots of amazing exhibitions. My daughter now lives in Chicago after getting her master’s degree from Northwestern and she started playing hockey again last year with joining a women’s league. When her team qualified for the payoffs, she told me that I needed to come back to see her play again. The last time I had been in Chicago was March of 2020 when I was driving across country with her brother trying to outrun the pandemic shutdown of the country. I acknowledged I was long overdue to visit so I agreed to a long weekend. The playoffs were up near Madison, Wisconsin but I was able to bookend days around the tournament to get three days to photograph in Chicago, museum hop, and eat at my favorite restaurants.

Chicago has been my favorite city to visit since I first went there in 1987 to photograph Wrigley Field, before they installed the light. I have been to Chicago at least twenty-five now. Chicago became our go to vacation spot, it was an easy flight, there was lots to do, and we just liked the city. Chicago had everything a big city should have but there is a Midwest atmosphere which is just nice. It is an amazing sports town, the museums are amazing, and the city has the best steaks of anywhere in the world.

Photographing on the street in Chicago is amazing I always find good images there. Like in New York there are usually lots of people walking about the city and there is plenty of interaction which usually adds layers of meaning to an image. I have also found that most of the time I have been in Chicago the quality of light in Chicago has been outstanding, which is not the case other places. I think part of it has to do with the way the streets are laid out, there is more room between the buildings there than most cities. I think part of that is by design since architectural design is so important in the city and there may have been a conscious plan to allow some buildings to have room around them to be showcased. The Chicago River and lake front also allow more light to fall in the city. The beauty of the architecture in Chicago is also lends itself to more interesting backgrounds of images. I also think the way some of the buildings are constructed that they improve the bounce light. The city also has that Midwest atmosphere most places which is nice. Michigan Avenue is a wide street with wide sidewalks and planter boxes; the street was designed for shoppers and heavy pedestrian traffic. With Michigan Avenue’s sidewalks being so wide not only does that allow more light into the area but it also has always given me room to maneuver and get in position to frame my images better than anywhere else. I have become so familiar and comfortable with the city I always do well with a camera there.

It was amazing on this trip in March how quickly I was back in the zone while photographing on the street. At times it felt like images were coming to me and I wasn’t having to search as hard as I do in Los Angeles sometimes. I especially found that interesting because I spent more time on this trip than ever before photographing South of the river, especially around Daly Square where I don’t usually go.

My Chicago portfolio is special to me, and I envision having an impact on others in book form and as part of a permanent collection. The Chicago Historical Society already has some of my photographs in their collection and hopefully I can find more homes in the city for my work soon.

This trip also inspired me to start digitizing more Chicago negatives and I have added some of those recently scanned images to my Chicago Portfolio here on my website.

Below are some of the images from my March 2024 trip:

CHI DSC 6514 3-26-24

CHI DSC 6263 3-26-24

CHI DSC 3359 3-22-24

CHI DSC 3410 3-22-24

CHI DSC 03958 3-25-24

CHI DSC 6257 3-26-24

CHI DSC 04315 3-25-24

CHI DSC 3234 3-22-24

CHI DSC 3159 3-22-24

CHI DSC 6181 3-26-24

Picasso: Drawing from Life - Art Institute of Chicago

June 12, 2024

On this trip to Chicago, I was lucky enough to see the Picasso: Drawing from Life exhibition before it closed on April 8th. I always enjoy seeing the works of the great artists up close, so I can inspect their craftsmanship detail. Experiencing well-crafted artwork always makes you better at your own craft regardless of if their medium is the same or different as yours.

The curators designed this exhibition to examine the people in Pablo Picasso’s life who supported him as he developed as an artist. It considers his artist network, the art dealers who promoted his work, the printers who crafted his editions, his family and friends, as well as his lovers. The exhibition is centered on his works on paper to tell this story. The exhibition illustrated how Picasso needed this support network to achieve the prominence he gained in his career.

The exhibition is arranged chronologically and showcases over 60 of his works to illustrate Picasso’s incredible 70-year career. It was incredible to consider all the world events that occurred during the period in which Picasso lived and how they impacted his works.

I loved drawing as a child, my mom knew how important it was to be creative while developing, but I have never been satisfied with my drawing or art skills. I always wanted to be more accurate like several of my talented friends were. I assume that desire to better with a pencil or brush may have helped influence me becoming a photographer. I loved seeing the artist’s had in this work above, Seated Female Nude - Sumer 1909, I was probably drawn to the detail with this work more than the whole image.

The lithograph above, Paloma and Her Doll on a Black Background, got my attention because I was interested in how he documented his feelings for his daughter for his daughter with it as well as the innocence element of Paloma’s relationship with her doll. As today’s world gets more tense, I have paid more attention to examples of the innocence of youth and their fragility. It is deeper than I want to go in to here, but this print had an impact.

CHI DSC 6181 3-26-24 William Karl Valentine

I loved seeing this drawing Six Busts of Women because I was able to spend so much time on the trip photographing the actual statue in Daley Square. For all the time I have spent in Chicago I have never explored Daley Square before as much as I did on this trip. Loved learning more about the subject matter in my photographs from there.

One of Picasso’s most important Cubist Portraits, a painting of Picasso’s long-standing promoter and influential art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884-1979) (Below)

Below are more random selections of works in the exhibition. I truly appreciate Pablo Picasso’s work, especially how he worked with so many different materials and was not afraid to explore with his creativity.

*Still Life with Glass Under the Lamp - March 19, 1962*

The Art Institutes copy of the famous Picasso etching Minotauimachia (Above)

In honor of Picasso’s titling style (maybe his dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler handled the titles since so many are obvious descriptions of the work, seemingly assigned for record keeping purposes) I title my photograph below: My Daughter Alyssa by sign for the Picasso Exhibition at the Chicago Art Institute.

Dr. Rebecca Senf - Center for Creative Photography - “Ask a Curator” life webcast

Recent Photography Webcast Worth Viewing - Becky Senf & Joel Meyerowitz

October 23, 2023

I have been able to watch a number of great live web events recently about photography and I want to quickly mention them in a post. With all the material out there today, I feel like I was lucky to have found these. The first two I discovered because I follow Dr. Rebecca Senf at the Center for Creative Photography and the last one was an Instagram alert about a live broadcast starting because I follow Joel Meyerowitz.

The first webcast was four weeks ago and was the Center for Creative Photography’s “Ask a Curator” event where Rebecca Senf (Becky) answered questions about being a curator for an hour. I thought this was outstanding and I encourage photographers, or anyone interested in fine art photography, to follow the “Ask a Curator” link and listen to her talk. I have really focused on getting to know curators and other photography professionals lately, just to deepen my understanding of the medium and the direction it is going. I have met Becky several times, have heard her lecture, and read her writings. She shares content in a way that every person who receives the information will gain a better level of understanding of the topic. I love listening to Becky talking about photography, her knowledge of, and passion for, the medium always comes through.

The next live webcast I saw was also promoted on Rebecca Senf’s Instagram. This event was the Photographic Arts Council - Los Angeles’s A Picture a Minute where well-known photographers, collectors, and curators each selected a single photograph and spoke to why the image was important to them, ideally for just one minute. You can see with my screen shot above the list of participants was impressive.

With the picture in a minute webcast, speakers were moving fast and my note taking was not perfect, but here is what I got down – I researched as much as I could to prevent errors, my apologies if I missed anything.

The concept for the event came from a project Agnes Varda had done for French television where she did 170 episodes called “un minute for un image”. Agnes wanted to how a single photo could impact people. Agnes felt that viewing photographs gave her space and time to think and wanted to share that with others.

Here are a selection of the presenters and their chosen photographs:

Alia Malley shared the photograph “Earth rise over the Moon” taken on 12/24/68 by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders and spoke about how incredible that moment was for all of mankind and how important the image was capturing it. She also mentioned how intriguing it is to think the camera only captured 1/250th of a second in time but how powerful that fraction of time was.

Andrea Liss highlighted Carry Mae Weems photograph “Moody Blue Girl”

Arpad Kovacs’s photograph was David O. Alekhuogie’s 2015 image “Bandana Hearts”.

PAC LA’s Director, Bayley Mizelle, talked about Alvin Baltrip’s 1975-80 series “The Piers” documenting the gay cruising spots in New York City before the Aids epidemic.

Cesar Rueda showcased a photograph by Magnum’s Yael Martinez.

Paula Ely shared Vik Muniz’s “Ecstasy of St. Theresa after Benini” 2015

Clare Kunny and her husband Colin Westerbeck spoke about a photograph in their personal collection which is a dual portrait of Colin by Joel Meyerowitz. They spoke about how the image was photographed and how special it is to them (There is more about this image below including Joel’s comments about it which I heard in a separate web cast).

Dan Solomon spoke about Deborah Turbeville’s American Vogue editorial in the 1970’s and mentioned there was a ‘sense of decay, Photos are about memories”.

Gallerist Douglas Marshall paid tribute to Lawrence McFarland, who passed this year by talking about the power of his photograph “Wheatfields Nebraska/Kansas border 1976”.

Elena Dorfman’s choice was an 1872 Eadweard Muybridge print.

LACMA’s Eve Schillo chose Yan Wang Preston’s 2017 image Egongyan Park.

Hiroshi Watanabe didn’t understand the “one-minute” aspect of the event, but he gave an interesting talk about a Robert Frank print he had owned once, “New Orleans Trolley 1955”. Hiroshi paid $8,000 for the print in 1992 and when he decided to sell it a few years later, because it had started to fade slightly, it sold at auction for $36,800.

Jeanne M. Connell showed a 1948 print of Solarized Calla Lillies by Carlotta Corpron. I was not familiar with Corpron, who a teacher at Denton College in Texas, but this image was beautiful.

Jo Ann Callis shared Daido Moriyama’s famous 1971 photograph “Stray Dog”.

Rebecca Senf chose a photograph by Ansel Adams which was printed early in his career, a 1927 print of Mount Galen Clark. I found her selection interesting because I have seen exhibitions of Adams’s photographs where multiple prints of the same image, from different stages in Adams’s career, are hung together to show the evolution of his technique. I also found it interesting to see which Adams image Becky chose since she has expert knowledge of most all his work.

Robert Berman selected a Julian Wasser image that I know and like of Duchamp playing chess with a nude model. I did a blog post earlier this year when Wasser passed away. I have seen video of Wasser talking about his life and photography before, he definitely lived life to the fullest and made some great images. I also liked the fact this particular image was made in Pasadena, California in 1963, because I was born there that year.

Former gallerist Stephen White shared a Bill Brandt nude.

Virginia Heckert, who is the curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum talked about Shigemi Uyeda’s 1925 photograph “Reflections on the Oil Ditch” from their collection.

Michael Hawley, Chairperson of the Getty Photographs Council, chose a Graciela Iturbide photograph, titled “Angelita” 1979. Listening to Hawley, he obviously has great insight into the medium and he said a couple good things worth sharing: “The art of photography are pictures that offer more questions than answers” and he reminded people to get to know their artists who are still here.

Long time Los Angeles gallerist Paul Kopeikin shared a vernacular photograph of a cowboy and a girl from his collection and spoke to how anyone can collect photographs which I thought this picture was an awesome share. Paul’s words reminded me of some of Bill Jay’s lessons on the value of a photograph back when I was studying at Arizona State.

I am thankful the Photographic Arts Council - Los Angeles put this event on, it had a lot of value.

**Darius Himes - Christie’s**

Interviewing Joel Meyerowitz along with Alejandro Cartagena

The final live webcast I saw was Darius Himes and Alejandro Cartagena interviewing Joel Meyerowitz about his recent venture into the NFT market. I follow Joel on Instagram and got notification that the live video was starting, and at that time I was able to watch it. Alejandro is an artist in his own right, but he is collaborating with Joel, helping his go through his massive archive to find images from the past. Darius is the International Head of Photographs for Christie's. The conversation between these three was interesting enough but then Alejandro brought up the fact he had participated in the Photographic Arts Council - Los Angeles’s A Picture a Minute and mentioned one of Joel’s photographs had been featured in the event. The photograph was a dual portrait of Colin Westerbeck, one image in the morning and the second image in the afternoon in his apartment, I believe in Chicago. In the pre-digital age, it was a slightly complex image to compose so the frame edges lined up correctly. During the PAC LA event Colin and his wife, Clare Kunny, spoke about the print which still hangs in their house and how important it is to them because of their relationship with Joel. When Alejandro brought it up in this webcast Joel then talked about his photographic process for the image. It was fascinating hearing the perspectives from the three people involved in making the image. Colin is the former Curator of Photographs at the Art Institute of Chicago and an educator. Clare Kunny specializes in education programs within the museum environment. Colin and Clare have lived in Los Angeles for some time now. Joel Meyerowitz is another photography icon that is always worth listening to. He is one of the best image makers of all time and has such incredible energy.

There is so much content online now and it’s hard to navigate through it all, but when you do you often find some amazing content. Hopefully you will find the time to explore some of the links I have shared here.

Unfortunately the Iconic exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago closed just after I saw it but for those who missed it hopefully this post will help you appreciate how good it was.

PHOTOGRAPHY + PHOTOGRAPHY Iconic: Photographs from the Robin and Sandy Stuart Collection

August 18, 2019

As a photographer there is always value in looking at prints by the Masters in the history of photography. Especially prints such as these in this exhibition which truly all are Iconic images. Garry Winogrand is my favorite photographer, I take every chance I can to see his prints and I am glad he was included. Weston was such a master printer, for me seeing his work is a spiritual experience. I remember being at one of the first Photo LA events (around 1993?) and picking up a Weston print of a pepper which was sitting in an open bin with other prints (all were matted). At the time it was a $5,000 print, and it was so powerful to look at every detail of the image and realize Weston also did the same thing when he made this print. I liked both Weston prints in this exhibition and was again in awe of his printing with the Charis Wilson - Nude on Sand print. I recognized every image in this exhibition and appreciated all the information each accompanying title card had about the image. This exhibition was well curated and one thing I really liked was that everyone who saw the exhibition probably came away with some new knowledge about photography, I know I did. The images were somewhat eclectic but their stories were all so unique that they became very concise when displayed together.

Rich and Poor by Jim Goldberg 1978-1983 (printed 1984) 30 images

I was sitting in Bill Jay’s class at Arizona State University when I first saw Jim Goldberg’s series Rich and Poor. It was probably 1986 just after the series came out. It was powerful and to this day I still remember some of the saw there, most notably the photograph of Larry J. Benko and his son where Larry described himself to be too “rough” of a father for his son David who he called “Fragile”. Today, as I was then, I am amazed of how Jim Goldberg was first able to get people to pose for portraits in the privacy of their homes but then how he was able to get these people to open up so much and be completely transparent about their lives and their opinions of themselves. This series is a fantastic document, it powerful, and it truly is thought provoking. Combining text on prints is also not as simple as it seems. While at ASU I remember several classmates and a professor trying to produce bodies of work in that style, obviously emulating Goldberg’s work, and they didn’t work. The series Rich and Poor allows the viewer to seriously consider what really is valuable in life. I have had the book in my collection for a long time and seeing this has inspired me to revisit it. The images, and text, are truly powerful both individually and as a group. I thought the decision to display the prints on walls of a entry hallway for the museum was brilliant. The prints weren’t tucked back in a gallery room but they were right out there in the open for everyone who passed by to stop and see. Much like the people in the photographs who were allowing their own stories to be told, they were putting themselves out there for everyone to see. Once again another good photography exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago.

Postcommodity: With Each Incentive at The Art Institute of Chicago

August 18, 2019

With Each Incentive is an installation at The Art Institute of Chicago on view now through April 26th, 2020. It is located on the Bluhm Family Terrace near the cafe and I saw it on my last visit. I definitely found it visually interesting, especially in contrast to the Chicago skyline. The architecture in Chicago is amazing so I could see this artwork in contrast to the beauty of the skyline just based on the simplicity of the concrete blocks and rebar compared to the skyscrapers. Then I read the artist statement about the work…

I didn’t see all that meaning which is attributed to the work in the statement when I was there and after reading, then contemplating, the description on line after, I still don’t see it. The statement makes some impressive claims how these artists are “aggressively tackling some of the most pressing issues of the day” and that this installation “contemplates how Chicago might be transformed by the current wave of Indigenous American refugees from Mexico and Central and South America.” I’m sorry but I don’t see it, and if anything interpreting the statement and applying it to the installation for me it feels like a negative statement against lower construction standards in Mexico and countries in Central and South America.

But here is the good thing about art, everyone can have their own opinion about things. If someone else were to feel every claim of the statement while experiencing this installation great. Also just because I don’t see the installation living up to everything billed in the statement, I still thought the contrast with the skyline was interesting. Everyone brings something different with them when they go to the museum and all experiences can not, or should, be equal.