When I moved to New York in June 1999 the first gallery show I saw was of Ray K. Metzker’s City Stills, and it really influenced me. It caused me to pay a lot of attention to light and shadow… maybe you won’t see much of that kind of work on this blog (as I’m currently shooting color digital instead of black and white film), but you can check out Metzker and then look at my early New York black and white work…
Anyway, I was at the Chicago Public Library last week and picked up City Stills for the first time in nearly ten years. I knew a lot of the photos were from Chicago - I’ve been wanting for years to take street pictures in Chicago because of Metzker’s work - but now I recognize some of the exact locations from City Stills. One such place is here, where today I got yet another face touching shot:
And I’m sad that I couldn’t find a link to the exact Metzker image the above photo corresponds to, but if any of you happen to have City Stills, get it out and flip through until you recognize this background. I’ve been trying all week to get a picture on that spot…
zener | 01-Jul-08 at 12:01 pm | Permalink
the 1st and 3rd ones especially remind me of the magnum 9/11 shots of people fleeing and grimacing… morbid, but i’m commenting!