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Rain was in the forecast today, but on North Avenue Beach, it was nowhere to be found. Sunny, warm, but none of the July and August humidity was in the air, which probably kept beach attendance down a bit, but there were still plenty of people milling about. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. Volleyball, touch football, castles in the sand, and the smell of a little reefer in the air.
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Given what a delightful day it was, I found it odd to stumble across these rather sinister looking bottles, high on a windowsill. The first feature I saw was the white light, but then I noticed that the bottles were casting a rather large and sinister shadow. It was the setting sun that provided an intense source of light.
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If you are looking for somewhere over the rainbow in Chicago, walk along the Riverwalk toward the Lake Shore Drive Bridge. Centennial Fountain is located on the north side of the river. Dedicated in 1989, the fountain commemerates the 100th anniversary of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.
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As you walked into the old section of the Art of Institute of Chicago, you pass a grand staircase. On the first landing is a bronze sculpture of a torso created by Roussillon-born sculpturer Aristide Maillol in 1906. It is entitled Enchanted Action. The white light in the staircase always tickles down to the toes, and yet the torso has no toes to tickle.
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Several years back, Nutella was the rage on college campuses. The little single serving packets were replacing salt, sugar, and butter packets in college cafeterias, with administrators being forced to keep a sharp eye on students loading pockets, purses, and backpacks with dozens of those packets filled with delicious chocolate hazelnut goo.
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Gerhard Steidl, the German master publisher of photography and art books, delivered the annual Hugh Edwards Lecture at the Art Institute of Chicago this evening. Toward the end of the lecture, Steidl said he is a technician, not an artist. Most devotees to the books that he publishes would strongly disagree.
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A capacity crowd at the University of Chicago's Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts heard Vijay Iyer, one of Eicher's artists, perform last night with a sextet. At the end of the concert, one enthusiastic listener told trumpeter Graham Hayes that he heard Sketches of Spain in some parts of the music.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Elks National Memorial located just to the west of the north end of Lincoln Park is a reminder of the sacrifice of the many Americans who fought and died in World War I. Planning for the memorial began two years after the war ended in 1918. The organization selected New York architect Egerton Swarthout's design.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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I decided to take a little walk today. Down Roscoe, down Broadway, down Clark, down Wells, down Franklin, and arrive three hours later in back of the Merchandise Mart.
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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.
