Chicago Building Facades Black and White Photography

Windows, Steel and Geometry Compressed Into a Chicago Cityscape

What interested me here was how completely the buildings filled the frame. There is almost no sky and no street, only layer after layer of Chicago architecture compressed into a dense arrangement of windows, structural lines and contrasting facades.

I framed the photograph so the individual buildings begin to lose some of their identity. On the left, diagonal steel braces cut across a dark grid of windows. A much lighter facade dominates the centre with its relentless pattern of rectangular openings, while darker buildings close in from the sides. Near the bottom, smaller structures interrupt the repetition and a thin plume of steam rises from a rooftop.

That small detail matters to me. Without it, the photograph could almost become a study in pure geometry. The steam introduces something temporary into an otherwise rigid scene, a brief irregular shape surrounded by thousands of straight lines.

Black and white strengthens that contrast. Colour would have separated the buildings in a different way, but monochrome allows the tones, patterns and architectural rhythms to become the subject. Some windows reflect light, others disappear into shadow, and the entire frame shifts between repetition and interruption.

I often find Chicago most interesting when I stop trying to photograph complete buildings. By isolating fragments and allowing several structures to overlap, the city becomes something more abstract. Here, architecture is less about individual landmarks and more about density, scale and the patterns created when one building is placed against another.

© Dan Kosmayer, 2011