During his late 20s, while living in Chicago from 1988 to 1991, photographer Mark Steinmetz spent much of his time capturing images of everyday people in everyday situations. “I kind of think of myself as an archaeologist, but living in the time and just describing it,” says Steinmetz, 64, a former Guggenheim fellow who now resides in Athens, Georgia, and whose works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other institutions. “Most photography is about happy people, thumbs-up kind of things, or dramatic moments,” he notes. But he’s more interested in what he describes as “shades of boredom,” an emotion he thinks is “underdescribed in our culture.”
A number of his Chicago photos — shot with 35 mm and medium format cameras and developed in the bedroom of his Wrigleyville apartment — have appeared in books he has published over the years. But many more were stashed away, largely unseen by the public for three and a half decades. Taken mainly on the North Side and downtown, they have finally gotten their moment in his new book, Chicago (Nazraeli Press), and in a recent exhibition at the Stephen Daiter Gallery here.
Steinmetz says he shot the series in black and white partly as an homage to the famous street photographers Weegee and Helen Levitt and partly because, free of a focus-stealing layer of color, the work is “more purely about light.” Though his images are a human-centric time capsule of the city, they don’t attempt to make a larger statement about the Chicago of that era: “You frame a portion of the world, and you’re left with just the facts within that frame.”
“This was on Montrose Avenue under the L tracks. The man is taking a breather on his way home with groceries in his cart. He has a certain style: his jewelry, his sports clothes with cutoff shorts. He’s also missing part of the index finger on his right hand. He has a look that speaks to the experiences he’s had in life.”“Waiting to cross a street just seems interesting to me. It’s kind of related to boredom. There’s also something about this woman’s hand reaching to scratch her back that looks like some sort of spinning device. Or maybe it’s there because she feels like someone is looking at her back.”“I didn’t see this accident happen, but I heard it from my apartment on Waveland and ran out to take some pictures. The man is in his dapper suit carrying something in an unglamorous twisted plastic bag instead of a briefcase — it’s just surreal. It kind of looks like he might be in some way culpable, but he’s not.”“This man was on some kind of break downtown, reading a book with something about God in the title. It looks like he works for one of those hot dog places. The hem on his pants is interesting — why is it extended another inch? You can see all the cars parked in a certain way and that ‘Entrance’ sign and skyscrapers in the background. But it’s mostly about a man on a break.”“I took this photograph near Montrose Beach of what seems to be a family. I like the man’s flexible nature — the whole stream and flow of arms and legs. The kid flat on his or her back with the baby bottle. The man holding a pack of cigarettes. You could say it’s an update on impressionist paintings by Seurat, Renoir, and others who depict leisure on Sunday afternoons in public places.”“This woman at Oak Street Beach was just sort of tuned out, listening to music on headphones. The concrete barrier separates her from the on-rushing traffic: She’s kind of in this safe zone, and beyond it’s rather unsafe. It’s a picture of trying to find peace in a difficult context.”“The summers when I lived in Chicago were hot, and some of the neighborhoods would open up fire hydrants for instant refreshment. This kid dancing, balancing on one sneaker, is a beautiful gesture.”“People on trains now are always looking at a screen. Back then, you had to daydream or face your thoughts. This woman was on the Ravenswood Line, and I liked her solitude and contemplation, her state of being at ease. She’s well dressed, and you can see the way she sinks into her body, the way her wrist slopes down. There’s something very beautiful about her.”“I was on a bus stopped at an intersection when I took this. The older man is holding a cigarette and cupping his mouth. It looks a little like he’s wiping away a tear. It’s like the Yeats poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’: ‘That is no country for old men. The young / In one another’s arms …’ ”
