City Spaces: Photographs of Chicago Alleys

Rating:
Summary: meticulous revelations, gorgeous results
Review: Bob Thall has been making marvelous photographic books from marvelous big-camera photographs for more than a decade. He's also been systematically investigating the city of Chicago as a test case for the 21st century city. PERFECT CITY began by looking at the creative destruction of an architecturally significant and economically vibrant American urban downtown; THE NEW AMERICAN VILLAGE then looked at the new "urbanism" of what Joel Garreau has called the Edge Cities that have sprung up along the interstates and tollroads at a safe distance from the old metropolis. Now with CITY SPACES, he's tackling the newest phenomenon of American urbanism: the nostalgic return of downtowns as places to work, live, and be entertained. It's Thall's quirky intelligence at work that a collection of photographs of alleys could become a book about the resurgence of the old city, but that's what he shows us-- the way the city's encrustations of history, its graffiti, old signs, strange corners, odd spaces, and once-vibrant functional loading docks have become objects of nostalgic reverie, and Thall offers to be our guide in this visual treasure-hunt. This is a photographer of decidedly modernist sentiments. The play of subtle light on worn brick, the way mirror glass recedes deceptively into a non-existent, yet absurdly convincing surreal skyscape, the delight you feel as things line up into sensuous arrays when you stand precisely THERE and tilt your head like THIS and bend your knees oh-so-slightly: these are the matters of this book. Such visual sleight-of-sight requires superb printing to work in a book; luckily the Icelandic printers have labored with Nordic determination and the results are astonishing: blacks as smooth as velvet but still retaining a sense of detailed dark space; silvery sheens to steel, walls that crumble as you look at them.

Rating:
Summary: a tease!
Review: I met Bob in the spring of 1986 when I took his Architectural Photography course at Columbia College Chicago. It would be wrong to define Bob as an Architectural Photographer. He goes beyond the definition. The only thing "architectural" in his work are the buildings themselves. This guy is a documentarist and a good one! I thank him for the hard time he gave me when I took his course because he wanted us to do more than "just" taking pictures of buildings. It is quite difficult as you can imagine! The subject matter isn't flexible ...I guess I sometimes achieved that. An image such as "Near North Side neighborhood, Chicago, 1973" on page 2 isn't an architectural image. It is a document and a good one. I know for a fact that Bob spent many days studying the Art Sinsabaugh collection at the print study room of the Art Institute of Chicago. He actually took us there once. At the same time I sense some sadness and also shyness in these images. But they are beautiful and I can respond to them. Bob is a sensitive man and his course was more like a seminar where he opened himself to us as an image-maker and thinker.

There are a number of images in this book, which would make the day of a gestalt analyst: plates 13, 22, 31 (gorgeous isn't it?), 68, 69, and 70. The strange thing about these images is that images of alleys presuppose that there is more to them than what we are shown - "What is beyond that?". After all an alley is only the side, or back, of a building or of two or three buildings. Plates 18, 21, 24, 28, 34, 36, 48, 51, 52, 54, 65 have tremendous tension in them. I mean to say that the tension is created by the subject matter itself, and by the composition used. It is somehow difficult to close them. They go on and on. Great photography!

For those of us who think in terms of photographic images in the "great American tradition" of the view camera, this book is a breadth of fresh air. In his other books Bob achieves the greatness of an Ansel Adams when he produces images of urban landscapes. In this book he teases you! Thanks for the books and the 1986 course! I continue on learning a great deal from you and I sincerely hope that your current students do to!