I'm primarily a landscape photographer; I like to create images away from the noise and congestion of the city. Given a choice, I'd rather be lost in the wilderness than trekking through city streets. But I live near Chicago, the third largest city in America, and a city renown for its architecture. People come from all over the world to visit the city and be amazed by the downtown area, and I live less than an hour away by train. A few years ago, I realized I had a photographer's paradise on my doorstep and I needed to take advantage of it.
Chicago has been known for many things over the years– Al Capone, Prohibition and tommy guns in the 1920's, Michael Jordan in the 1990's, and now, unfortunately, gang violence and the city's high murder rate. But ever since the first steel frame skyscrapers went up in the 1880's, Chicago has been known the world over for its bold architecture. It's been said that the city is known for its originality, not its antiquity.
I've focused my lenses on the area known as the Loop, as well as the area north of the Chicago River surrounding Michigan Avenue. The buildings I've photographed are from different eras, spanning the history of Chicago architecture from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries; the appeal for me is not so much in the structures themselves, but in their aesthetic beauty.
