The Game Board project is a labor of love inspired by the square street grid of Chicago, in which major streets are laid out at half-mile intervals. I divided the city into 57 two-mile squares, which I designated as either “light” or “dark” in an alternating pattern beginning with a “light” square in the southeast corner. I then set out to visit and photograph every square, shooting “light” squares in daylight and “dark” squares at night. Finally, I re-rendered all the photos in black-and-white, cropped them square and arranged them into a photographic mosaic representing the entire city of Chicago.
Two full-size (36-by-48-inch) originals will be printed, along with a limited edition of 30 27-by-35-inch prints, on archival Hahnemühle Photo Pearl art paper.
I’ve been doing street photography for 25 years, mostly for my own enjoyment. Funny fact: I graduated from college in 1993 just one class short of completing a second major in photography. Then, for years, I never simultaneously had both the time to shoot and the money to buy film. In 2003, my beloved Minolta X-700 was lost in a burglary. The used replacement I found never had the same feel as the original. I bought a Canon PowerShot digital point-and-shoot to replace my backup camera, a Pentax K-1000. The PowerShot was good for about as much as you’d expect a point-and-shoot to be.
In 2014, for my 45th birthday, I got a Canon digital SLR, and I was off and running again. I took a summer course at Harold Washington College and completed my photography degree. In the process of making The Game Board, I did additional street photography on the side:
Pilsen, Chicago, 2015 Back of the Yards, Chicago, 2015 Lincoln Park, Chicago, 2015 Logan Square, Chicago, 2015One thing I’ve always enjoyed shooting is shop windows, layering the reflection of the street over the contents of the display. Back in the day, many people who saw these shots mistook them for multiple exposures; nowadays, no one knows what a multiple exposure is. :-)
South Shore Cultural Center, Chicago, 2015 Portage Park, Chicago, 2015 Devon Avenue, Chicago, 2015 Wauwatosa, Wis., 2014 Boston, 1999(more street photography at spyandowl.com/urban-photography)
Still, even though I love street photography, 25 years is a long time to be doing just one thing. Inspired by the great Humans of New York, I decided earlier this year to tackle something I never used to be interested in and never thought I’d be any good at: portraiture. Recently I’ve been soliciting volunteers to pose for headshots while I work through my process and get it to a stage where I feel comfortable charging for the service.
If you’re a generous soul who feels inclined to help me in this endeavor, please consider buying a print of The Game Board or of one of my other photos. Two sales of The Game Board will be enough to pay for production of the limited edition. The rest will compensate me for the time I spent traveling around the city to take the pictures and allow me to upgrade to professional studio–grade equipment. (Believe it or not, every one of these headshots was taken at the subject’s home or workplace, using available light plus a single umbrella flash. I can’t recommend Nick Fancher’s book Studio Anywhere highly enough.)
You can purchase prints of The Game Board directly through my website, www.spyandowl.com. For single-image prints, drop me a line to let me know which image(s) you’d like and to set up payment arrangements. (Individual 8-by-10 prints are $20 apiece, $45 for three, plus postage and, for Illinois residents, sales tax.) You can also follow me at www.facebook.com/spyandowl, where I’m posting daily images from The Game Board. It’s a virtual photographic tour of the city of Chicago; by the end of it, you’ll have seen more of the city than Rahm Emanuel has.
Happy holidays!