The New Wing

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Architect Renzo Piano's Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago has an expansive hallway that leads from Monroe on the wing's north side to the older sections of the museum on the south.  It is a grand space, with white walls and skylights, providing beautiful natural lighting.  People always look so elegant in this space, particularly when seated on the benches that line the walkway.  

Robert Frank

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The Art Institute of Chicago just opened an exhibit in the photography gallery in the Modern Wing featuring the work of Robert Frank, who many consider to be the father of street photography, although I think The Americans is a far more cohesive a body of work that goes well beyond the often ad hoc nature of what is typically characterized as street photography.  Throughout the exhibit, there are a number of references to Frank's desire for a quick, dirty, an ephemeral display of his work.

Saturday Bridge Lift

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Chicago is known for the sound of the electric blues, but long before Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Little Walter, and all the others plugged in, Chicago was an industrial center, home to foundries, transportation hubs, and animals headed through shuts to their slaughter. In the words of Carl Sandburg, the City of Broad Shoulders.  Emblematic of those shoulders are 27 or so bridges that tie one side of the Chicago River with the other.  

(un)Familiar

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There is a channel that leads into the Diversey Motorboat Harbor in Lincoln Park.  On the south side of that channel is the tiered landing pictured here, with just a few trees.  I've walked past it several hundred times over the years. Yet, its simplicity continues to fascinate.

It was a lovely afternoon to experiment with infrared photography.  Yes, unlike Instagram, this photograph was created in camera using a camera that had had its Beyer filter removed.  

Normalized

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After spending the better part of five hours last night watching non-stop cable coverage of the Trump-Comey story, I expected hundreds if not thousands of people to attend a demonstration today at the intersection of Wabash and Wacker immediately across the Chicago River from the Trump Tower--that being the unofficial site for anti-Trump demonstrations.

Lake Point Tower

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I went out this afternoon looking for a pair of shoes.  I decided to travel light, so I took my Leica M with the 12mm Voightlander wide angle lenses mounted, with a 28mm and a 90mm lenses in a small bag.  12mm equals insanity.  You either have to be extremely close or the object needs to be very large--although I did find an exception to that rule.  By day's end, I had some nice photographs, but no shoes.

Chicago Botanic Garden

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It was an unusually cold day today, with the driving winds whipping the willow tree branches about and chilling the air and my hands.  Not a good day for outdoor macro photography.  Nor did I find it a particularly good day for photographs providing overviews of the Japanese or English gardens.  The light was just too cold and harsh.  

Science

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Today some 40,000 Chicagoans participated in the March for Science, a nonpartisan demonstration that had heavy partisan overtones.  There certainly weren't Trumpians in evidence. It is hard not to be anti-Trump if you are scientist:  Trump wants to cut funding for science; Trump wants to politicize scientific research in an effort to support his anti-science policies (anti-vax, anti-climate, anti-research); and Trump wants to rely on alternative facts.

Tongue

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Having said all that, it is hard for me to imagine any of today's rock and pop musicians staging an exhibit like this in 40 or 50 years.  Given the web, social media, video games, and all the entertainment and expressive options available to people today, music just doesn't play quite the central role it once did in the culture.

Kevin Mahogany

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Kevin Mahogany opened his four-night engagement at Joe Segal's Jazz Showcase last night to an unjustly small audience that included four people from Iceland.  I last saw Mahogany 23 years ago at the Denver Botanic Gardens on a rainy summer night.  As I told Kevin after the second set, I should probably pay him for the blue rain slicker that I found on the ground that night.  I have traveled the world with it.

Dr. Lonnie Smith

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Woke up at 12:30PM today, worked on photographs, and then headed back to Joe Segal's Jazz Showcase for seconds.  Dr. Lonnie Smith and Company were still in the house.

6103

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26 U.S.C. § 6103   Returns and return information shall be confidential, and except as authorized by this title, no officer or employee of the United States, . . . shall disclose any return or return information obtained by him in any manner . . . .

Jazz Showcase

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I have always been a huge fan of Jimmy Smith, Brother Jack McDuff, and Jimmy McGriff, who I saw in a bar when I sixteen--the owner bought me a drink.  Dr. Lonnie Smith pushes the boundaries established by those luminaries, getting a lot of varied and interesting sounds out of his Hammond B3 organ.  Gotta love the spinning horn.  

Sunset at Lincoln Park

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Richard Misrach is one of my favorite photographers.  He undertook a three-year project in which he photographed the Golden Gate Bridge from the same vantage point from his front porch, located somewhere in the vicinity of Berkley.  Misrach was demonstrating that photography is often more about the light and the weather conditions than the specific subject matter.

Freddy Cole

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I love seeing our jazz treasures.  The years of performing and experimenting are often on display, as they were during Cole's set.  Accompanied by a bass player, drummer, and guitarist, Cole lead a very subtle, but powerful quartet, playing a number of selections from the American Songbook, as well as a tune by Sonny Boy Williamson, which reflects the influence of the blues that pervades the entire effort.  

Fermi Labs

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Fermi Labs is located in Batavia, Illinois, about 40 miles west of Chicago.  Sited on prairie land, the lab explores the "mysteries of matter, energy, space, and time," putting it in the same business as the late Leon Russell, who was the Master of Space and Time.  And you know, there isn't really much difference between physics and music, its all about gaps in space, timing, acceleration, and deceleration.  

 

Corrosion in Woodstock

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These tanks are located about 2 to 3 blocks off the main square in Woodstock, Illinois.  That square served as the location for Bill Murray's 1993 classic film Groundhog Day.  There are plenty of plaques commemorating the film.