Stanley Greenberg’s intimate portraits of buildings in progress, at the Art Institute
Author Archives: Stephen Longmire
Posted inNews & Politics
A Secret Visitor
Why you didn’t hear a peep about the first whooping crane to land in Chicago in more than a century.
Posted inNews & Politics
For the Love of a Camera
These Parts: Jack Deardorff and Ken Hough once came together to try to save a classic American machine. Now they don’t even speak.
Posted inNews & Politics
Worlds Turned Upside Down
Abelardo Morell shoots Chicago through room-size pinhole cameras.
Posted inArts & Culture
City on the Page
An innovative deal between Columbia College and a fine-art publisher gets the work of Chicago photographers into book form.
Posted inArts & Culture
The Light Acrobatic
Using mirrors, flashlights, and no doubt a lot of calories, Tokihiro Sato paints the air.
Posted inArts & Culture
The View From the Road
A first retrospective for Art Sinsabaugh establishes his mastery of the Illinois landscape.
Posted inArts & Culture
Writers on the Wall
Jeanne Hilary at Lallak + Tom and Agnes B., through December 19 Abelardo Morell at Catherine Edelman, through December 30 By Stephen Longmire Traditionally both photographers and writers have been makers of books; indeed, photographers might be called the modern illuminators of manuscripts. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that many photographers have […]
Posted inArts & Culture
War’s Witness
Robert Capa: Photographs at the Terra Museum of American Art, through January 3 By Stephen Longmire My father, like many young Americans of his generation, went to the Spanish civil war out of sympathy for the Republican government, which was being overwhelmed by the rising tide of European fascism. He went not to fight but […]
Posted inArts & Culture
What’s in a Face?
Chuck Close Museum of Contemporary Art, through September 13 Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz: Metaphysical Portraits at the Chicago Cultural Center, through September 13 By Stephen Longmire When Chuck Close joined the New York art world in the late 60s it was still under the spell of abstract expressionism, which had reinvented most of painting’s traditional categories […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Little Glass house on the Prairie
An art collector makes himself at home in an architectural marvel
Posted inArts & Culture
Visitor’s Guide
Madison Wisconsin Madison’s firefighters and gays and lesbians tend to head to different haunts. Here’s where you might find some of each. Many of those who quash Madison’s blazes get their after-hours drinks at the Caribou Tavern (703 E. Johnson, 608-257-5993), a cramped bar owned by retired police officer Denny Schmelzkopf. Schmelzkopf has never given […]
Posted inArts & Culture
In Print: Danny Lyon’s Outlaw days
Somewhere on the 5400 block of South Woodlawn, there’s a first-floor apartment that may retain a message from 30 years ago. A young photographer concealed his signature on top of a door for posterity, and if it hasn’t been painted over, you might still read the line: “Danny Lyon made ‘The Bikeriders’ here.” Lyon’s 1968 […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Life in Pictures
Irving Penn: A Career in Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, through February 1 By Stephen Longmire In his earliest fashion photo-graphs and portraits for Vogue, in what would now be deemed a postmodernist gesture, Irving Penn often showed the edge of the “seamless” studio backdrop, allowing electrical cords from his artificial lights to […]