Left: Bridge House, Michigan Avenue Bridge, Chicago 1996

Right: The Bowman, Grant Park, Chicago 2006
© Susan Carr

Intimate Landscapes Series

by Susan Carr

This body of work was produced between 1994 and 2000. The photographs were made in a variety of places including Michigan, Chicago, Savannah, Georgia and Athens, Greece. My interest was in photographing parks and older neighborhoods where I could find visual vignettes that revealed the complex harmonies of past and present. I sought out subject matter, both historically significant and mundane, which resonates for me a palatable human history. My goal is to merge place, memory and vision yielding a unified verse that captures a vivid sense of experience.

Bishop Street, Chicago 2005
From the series The Pilsen Project
© Gary Cialdella

The Pilsen Project

by Gary Cialdella

My photography is in the social landscape tradition. I work intuitively, searching out meanings in a variety of places and regions, always with the intent of evoking as sense of place. The Pilsen* series, takes place in Chicago’s largest Latino neighborhood. There’s a visual vibrancy in this Mexican-American community that flows from the Mexican inhabitants’ refashioning the neighborhood to celebrate their culture and heritage. The affect of this is like a stage set, only in this place the scenes change as you walk the streets – Chicago streets, with all the excess and complexity of contemporary American culture.

For this series, working in both black and white and color allowed me to more fully reveal the confluence of art and daily life present in Pilsen. Merging the monochrome and color images into diptychs, the graphic juxtaposed with ritualistic color, I could best express the sensory affect I felt being in this community. The city’s linear streetscape is a part of the rich visual complexity of the neighborhood. I used the panoramic camera to emphasize the linear flow of changing scenes in the city streets and alleys.  The diptychs and panoramas combine to evince the everyday flow of life expressed in the theatricality of the murals and graffiti that enliven this neighborhood.

*From the late 19th Century to the present the neighborhood has been the immigrant’s gateway to the city, and to achieving the American dream. The earlier immigrants that settled in Pilsen were German and Eastern Europeans, of Czech and Polish ancestry. The name Pilsen comes from the Czech city of the same name.

Left: Mural Detail with Cars, Chicago 2007

Right: Red Car and Mural, Chicago 2005
© Gary Cialdella

The Pilsen Project

by Gary Cialdella

My photography is in the social landscape tradition. I work intuitively, searching out meanings in a variety of places and regions, always with the intent of evoking as sense of place. The Pilsen* series, takes place in Chicago’s largest Latino neighborhood. There’s a visual vibrancy in this Mexican-American community that flows from the Mexican inhabitants’ refashioning the neighborhood to celebrate their culture and heritage. The affect of this is like a stage set, only in this place the scenes change as you walk the streets – Chicago streets, with all the excess and complexity of contemporary American culture.

For this series, working in both black and white and color allowed me to more fully reveal the confluence of art and daily life present in Pilsen. Merging the monochrome and color images into diptychs, the graphic juxtaposed with ritualistic color, I could best express the sensory affect I felt being in this community. The city’s linear streetscape is a part of the rich visual complexity of the neighborhood. I used the panoramic camera to emphasize the linear flow of changing scenes in the city streets and alleys.  The diptychs and panoramas combine to evince the everyday flow of life expressed in the theatricality of the murals and graffiti that enliven this neighborhood.

*From the late 19th Century to the present the neighborhood has been the immigrant’s gateway to the city, and to achieving the American dream. The earlier immigrants that settled in Pilsen were German and Eastern Europeans, of Czech and Polish ancestry. The name Pilsen comes from the Czech city of the same name.

Left: Mural Detail 18^th Street, Chicago 2006

Right: Peace Mural and Alley, Chicago 2007
© Gary Cialdella

The Pilsen Project

by Gary Cialdella

My photography is in the social landscape tradition. I work intuitively, searching out meanings in a variety of places and regions, always with the intent of evoking as sense of place. The Pilsen* series, takes place in Chicago’s largest Latino neighborhood. There’s a visual vibrancy in this Mexican-American community that flows from the Mexican inhabitants’ refashioning the neighborhood to celebrate their culture and heritage. The affect of this is like a stage set, only in this place the scenes change as you walk the streets – Chicago streets, with all the excess and complexity of contemporary American culture.

For this series, working in both black and white and color allowed me to more fully reveal the confluence of art and daily life present in Pilsen. Merging the monochrome and color images into diptychs, the graphic juxtaposed with ritualistic color, I could best express the sensory affect I felt being in this community. The city’s linear streetscape is a part of the rich visual complexity of the neighborhood. I used the panoramic camera to emphasize the linear flow of changing scenes in the city streets and alleys.  The diptychs and panoramas combine to evince the everyday flow of life expressed in the theatricality of the murals and graffiti that enliven this neighborhood.

*From the late 19th Century to the present the neighborhood has been the immigrant’s gateway to the city, and to achieving the American dream. The earlier immigrants that settled in Pilsen were German and Eastern Europeans, of Czech and Polish ancestry. The name Pilsen comes from the Czech city of the same name.

Alley off 19^th Street, Chicago 2005
From the series The Pilsen Project
© Gary Cialdella

The Pilsen Project

by Gary Cialdella

My photography is in the social landscape tradition. I work intuitively, searching out meanings in a variety of places and regions, always with the intent of evoking as sense of place. The Pilsen* series, takes place in Chicago’s largest Latino neighborhood. There’s a visual vibrancy in this Mexican-American community that flows from the Mexican inhabitants’ refashioning the neighborhood to celebrate their culture and heritage. The affect of this is like a stage set, only in this place the scenes change as you walk the streets – Chicago streets, with all the excess and complexity of contemporary American culture.

For this series, working in both black and white and color allowed me to more fully reveal the confluence of art and daily life present in Pilsen. Merging the monochrome and color images into diptychs, the graphic juxtaposed with ritualistic color, I could best express the sensory affect I felt being in this community. The city’s linear streetscape is a part of the rich visual complexity of the neighborhood. I used the panoramic camera to emphasize the linear flow of changing scenes in the city streets and alleys.  The diptychs and panoramas combine to evince the everyday flow of life expressed in the theatricality of the murals and graffiti that enliven this neighborhood.

*From the late 19th Century to the present the neighborhood has been the immigrant’s gateway to the city, and to achieving the American dream. The earlier immigrants that settled in Pilsen were German and Eastern Europeans, of Czech and Polish ancestry. The name Pilsen comes from the Czech city of the same name.

Foundation and New Houses, New Orleans 2009
© Gary Cialdella

House with No Bulldozing Sign, New Orleans, LA 2006
© Gary Cialdella

Shell Gasoline Station, Gulf Port, Mississippi 2006
Church Gulf Port, Mississippi 2006
From the series The Gulf Coast After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
© Gary Cialdella

Storm Damaged House, Ocean Springs, Mississippi 2006
From the series The Gulf Coast After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
© Gary Cialdella

Aerial view, Summer Houses, Vicinity Saugatuck, Michigan 1983
© Gary Cialdella

The Shoreline Project: New Buffalo to Ludington, Michigan 1982-1983

by Gary Cialdella

As you drive along Michigan Route 43 west of Kalamazoo past small towns and hamlets, a rural terrain of hills, woods, homes and farms you gradually become aware of the changing landscape. The nearer to Lake Michigan, past Glendale and Bangor, the greater is the sense you are part of a different countryside. this is partly an intuitive experience, a visual difference this is confirmed by glimpses of the sandy soil one associates with the dunes, an unusual barn or farm house whose architecture strikes you as unique. After passing over the Gerald R. Ford Freeway, 40 miles west of Kalamazoo, you enter South Haven, a lake shore community with a population of 7,000; a farming community, with a swollen business district accommodating summer visitors and residents from Indiana and Chicago. The drive into town leads past a blend of old and contemporary architecture; early and late Victorian, Art Deco and Post WWII styles that include gasoline stations, revived fast food stands and drive-in restaurants. Once in town, passing over the Black River with docked fishing and pleasure craft, the ends at Lake Michigan.

Once the domain of grand resorts, South Haven boasts new cottages, summer homes and condominiums. New construction is everywhere you look. Sandwiched between three-story cedar-sided balconies is an occasional structure from the past, or a vacant lot where, perhaps, a resort once stood. A few blocks north of where the road ends at the lake you come face to face with one of the few standing older resorts; the Victoria, with rounded windows, glass embedded concrete and stone construction gleaming in the bright sunlight – the main building partly overgrown with Forsythia’s spreading early spring yellow against the building. Taking the circle drive you pass what was once the resort’s recreation hall. One can imagine the sounds of big band music coming from the building on a warm summer night. Past the recreation hall is the restaurant, and snuggled in the nearby trees are remnants of cottages. A faded sign above one cottage reads “King Faruch’s Palace. Perhaps, this was a prestige cottage rented to proper Chicago families who traveled the trains and ferries to vacation on the near the sandy shores of Michigan beaches. In the hey day of these resorts the 1920’s through the 40’s housing was restricted; advertisements in the Chicago papers read Gentile only. One result of discrimination are Jewish owned resorts such as Fidelman’s.

The vacant Victoria lead the city father’s of South Haven to debate its future, whether to consider it for a half-way house, apartments, or to be razed and replaced by condominiums. All along the eastern shoreline of Lake Michigan much of the social landscape is in the midst of change and we are left with the feeling of being witness to quickly changing environment, a place in the process of transformation.

This one hundred seventy mile slice of the American landscape from New Buffalo to Ludington, Michigan is an intricate blend of rural countryside and developed resort communities and cities. In addition to changes in the development in lakeshore communities, there are also environmental changes occurring; erosion of the dunes and hillsides adjacent the Lake has taken with it some houses and in periods of heavy rainfall residents are on alert. While at the same that communities attempt to remedy the ebb and flow of lake levels, in Bridgman adjacent to Warren Dunes State Park, sand mining operations eat away at the dunes. Erosion, sand mining, recreational and industrial development leave their impact on this landscape of gently rolling hills, bluffs, farms and orchards, sand dunes and grassy meadows.

In this fragile landscape is also an array of popular American culture; tourist attractions like Bill’s Dune Rides of Silver Lake, roadside inns, mom and pop motels, campgrounds cottages for rent and mansion-like homes overlooking Lake Michigan. Contradictions abound. Residents of shoreline communities are increasingly aware of the increasing pressures of the lakeshore environment. They adapt to changing economic conditions, encouraging tourism and adding new industry where possible.