by Matthias Pfau
So I had a prior post showing you the sugar coated, candy side of Chicago. Yes I plead guilty to this charge. To redeem myself I promise you, this post will be different. The photography style is inspired by the Japanese photo magazine “Provoke” (プロヴォーク) from the late 1960s. I suppose “Provoke” intended to use […]
Chicago, due to its location, was and remains the industrial hub for the mid west. Accordingly there are many active and abandoned industrial sights to be found. Most industries have been pushed out of the city. In my time the meat packers were expelled to make place for gentrification just west of the loop. I […]
Architecture is one of the most important legacies of Chicago. Walking through town you are treated to a history tour or you can just book a tour with the Chicago Architectual Society. Here are some samples of images I took in my almost ten years in Chicago. But don’t be mistaken, this is the glossy […]
Take the B or Q line down to Brighton Beach, the southern end of Brooklyn, and spend a weekend afternoon watching Russians enjoy life in the American diaspora. The one block walk from the station to the beach shows already something is a little different here. Typically you don’t find this type model on American […]
A random collection of images from the city of big shoulders. Calder’s Flamingo sculpture, right in the center of the loop, is a fun location for photography. Surrounded by the legacy of Mies van der Rohe’s architecture it stands out in bright red. The Chicago Air and Water show used to be a fun event. […]
Some preliminary thoughts on how to capture color or by extension light rather than using color to enhance an image. Many great photographers taught us how color can be put to good use in photography, too many to list them all right here. Far fewer photographers go out to capture light, or color for their […]
(Making a case for photo cubism aka joiners) Many times I witnessed photographers vehemently objecting to images like David Hockney’s famous “Pearlblossom HWY”, California Just to show how far such objections go, recently a portrait photography group on FB, a group with many professional photographers contributing, took down this portrait with no explanation offered. […]
What to do when the world is inundated with images of a subject you care to capture using photography.
Let me try to connect the work of Japanese Photographers from the 1950’s and 60’s to their aesthetic heritage and contrast their work from everything western tradition teaches us about photography and the ever elusive, perfect, prize winning shot. If this blog makes you go out and experiment by giving up some of the control over […]
Did you ever take an honest and thoughtful look at how children, childhood and adolescence feature in photography. More personally how was your childhood captured in images what parts of your youth did your parents decide to capture and more importantly what didn’t they? I believe there is a vast field stuck in cliche, constrained […]
