“At the edge of a city made monotonous by the unyielding street grid of right angles and the seemingly endless repetition of two-flats and bungalows, the twin communities of Beverly Hills and Morgan Park offer the wearied urbanite a visual respite.”
That’s how photographer Mati Maldre describes the Southwest Side neighborhood in his book “The Architecture of Chicago’s Beverly Hills/Morgan Park,” which features 256 duotoned photographs of the area’s notable homes, arranged by historical district.
It’s an area where you can find residences designed by architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Daniel H. Burnham and Dwight H. Perkins, which is what drew him in. Also, “I got to know people in the community pretty well because I was teaching at the Beverly Arts Center starting in 1973.” The neighborhood featured also happens to be where Maldre lives.
“Starting in 1980, I bought a house there that’s designed by Walter Burley Griffin, so there was just a natural interest,” he said. His home is among those featured in the pages of the book.
Maldre’s background is in fine art photography, a subject he taught for 35 years as a professor at Chicago State University. But his interest in architecture began early on, beginning with drafting classes he took as a high school student at Lane Tech. In college, he was an engineering major before switching to architecture. “But there was still too much math involved,” he said, “so I eventually switched to art and design.”
Initially, he was assembling these neighborhood photos for no particular reason.
“When I bought this house, I went out intentionally photographing all of the Walter Burley Griffin homes in the community because it just made sense. I live in one, I’m going to photograph all the others. Afterwards, I’d go home, develop the film in my darkroom and make prints,” Maldre said. “Most were 11-by-14 inch exhibition-quality prints, and I was pretty proud of them. I worked for Encyclopedia Britannica for a couple of years as a darkroom technician, so I became pretty adept at making decent prints that were reproduction quality.”
He eventually took his portfolio to the Beverly Area Planning Association and they liked his work enough to commission a series of house portraits. “We had an exhibit in 1986, and from that point on, I just kept photographing in the community,” he said. “I probably have over 800 structures that I have photographed in the community over all these years. Which means I have thousands of negatives, because each building you photograph, you don’t just take one photograph of it.”
He used a view camera, which is distinctive for its accordion-like appearance. “It takes a 4-by-5-inch film, or 5-by-7-inch film,” he said. “My camera is called a Deardorff, that’s the company name, and it’s a wooden camera, so it looks ancient. But it really isn’t; I bought it brand new in graduate school. And it allows you to tilt and swing the back of the camera, so if the camera is pointed up slightly, you can tilt the back to be parallel to the building, so when you’re done taking the picture, it’s a perfect rectangle. It allows you to have large-format film that shows tremendous detail.”
Why use this type of camera? “Architects wanted their homes photographed as they would appear on a drawing,” he said.
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But Maldre wasn’t photographing on behalf of any architects. He was simply doing this out of his own interest and curiosity. Decades later, he started thinking, “I should do something with all these pictures,” and started contacting publishers. “I love seeing my work published, but it’s usually one or two pictures at a time and I’d hate to see my work just put into a shoebox. That’s not the idea! I want to share my work with people and share the idea of this wonderful community.”
We never know what the future holds. Buildings go up, and buildings come down. We can’t foresee what changes might happen, and there’s value in having a historical record of different parts of the city. “That’s why the panoramic pictures I’ve taken are actually my favorite,” Maldre said. “They show the houses in relationship to each other and the landscape in relationship to the houses.”
He chose to photograph in black-and-white because, for most of history, that’s what archives preferred. “I actually photograph both in color and black-and-white, but when I was photographing early on, color was not thought of as archival” — meaning, its legitimacy to be retained as part of a permanent record of archives.
Maldre was taking these photos for his own pleasure, but wanted to ensure that they had the potential to be preserved by a third party. “I knew that there’s something to be said about the archival nature of your photographs,” he said. “If you’re going to bother to go through all of this trouble, why not make sure that you have pictures that will go beyond your lifetime? Now, with digital film, the National Archives is accepting color.”
Black-and-white images also offer something that color images do not, he added. “There’s just something about the beautiful graphic quality that provides a richness to the image,” Maldre said. “The forms and textures stand out.”
Did Maldre ever get funny looks as he walked around the neighborhood with his bulky camera, photographing people’s homes?
“I would knock on any house that I photographed and ask permission,” he said. “And I did that because I live in a historic home, and I know what it’s like to have people stand in front of your house taking pictures, and I’d be curious and think, ‘Why don’t you come ask for permission? That would be the nice thing.’”
Technically, if you’re standing on a public street, you don’t need to ask for permission. “But I don’t limit myself to standing on the sidewalk. I might be crawling around on your front lawn to avoid some trees,” Maldre said. “Now, if someone wasn’t home, I’d just go ahead and photograph it and not worry about it. But I think of all the homes I’ve photographed, I’ll bet you there were only two people that said no. And when that happened, I would just pack up my stuff and leave. I mean, if they don’t want me on their front lawn to photograph, then I won’t do it.”
When making inquiries, he would arrive with copies of documentation from the Ridge Historical Society explaining that he was a photography professor at Chicago State working on a project to document the community. “I didn’t want them to think there was any funny business going on. Because also, when I photograph a house, I might be there for an hour or more. I don’t take snapshots and just skedaddle,” he said.
For the most part, his neighbors were thrilled he wanted to photograph their homes. Some asked if the photos would appear in a book. “And I told them, ‘I hope so — eventually.’”
The book is a return, of sorts, for Maldre. From 2010 to 2020, he didn’t take any pictures at all.
“My wife (Kathy) had Parkinson’s disease. She passed away six years ago,” he said. “But for the 10-year period before that, I was helping my wife. I didn’t want to institutionalize her. So I quit the Ridge Historical Society, where I was a board member, and I didn’t photograph, and I spent my time helping my wife. She helped me when I was working on this project in the ’80s and ’90s, how could I not help her? We were married for 50 years.”
It’s only recently that he began photographing again.
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“The church I belong to, St. John the Divine, which is in Beverly, they’ve got some of the most beautiful stained-glass windows you could ever see. I wanted to photograph them. This was after my wife passed away,” he said. “And I took my view camera, and I was going to photograph all the windows — 40 different windows — and I was exhausted after photographing two windows.
“I said, you know what, I just bought a Nikon digital camera; why don’t I use that and see how it turns out? And in two days, I was able to photograph every single window with my Nikon. So I went ahead and printed them up and produced a little book. I made 50 copies and gave them to the parishioners. I wasn’t doing it for the purpose of selling, but there you go, there’s something I’ve published that’s in color! Beautiful little book.”