Isolated Buildings Study - Chicago/Gary

A friend and classmate of mine, Larry Massey, forwarded me David Schalliol's project of documenting sole-survivor scenarios among buildings in Chicago and in Gary, Indiana.



Below is his description:

These Isolated Building Studies are the visual confluence of my interests in urban dynamism, socioeconomic inequality and photography. By using a common composition to eliminate physical variables from these solo subjects, I hope to draw our attention to new ways of seeing the common impact of divergent investment processes on Chicago neighborhoods.

You can read more for yourself here and here.

Schalliol's photography speaks to the importance of these individual structures despite their apparent lost context. After all, the presence of so many of these holdouts, these unlikely islands of urbanity, presents its own context when viewed all together: the disinvested city, more often than not.


Check out the amazing, heartbreaking, surprising photo collection that, despite the extraordinary status of the subjects of the photographs, truly reveals that preservation is more about preservation of urban context than any one building itself. Or at least it should be.


Check out Ecology of Absence's post on the Near North Side Greek Revival structure that is about to expire after a slow, painful death process. As noted on that blog, the Near North Side, built up in the mid-18th Century, used to feature whole rows of this sparely-ornamented but elegant style. Now, would-be survivors like 1219 Clinton are reduced to freakish scars on an increasingly pristinely green landscape.