(photos by Lee Bey)
A friend of mine--who is a regular reader of Urban Observer--e-mailed me a few weeks back, chastising me for not posting enough photographs of men. "Are you ever going to photograph a man?" she said.
Indeed, I have.
(photos by Lee Bey)
Duty has called the Urban Observer away from the beat again. And you regulars know what that means: photos of good-looking women presented for no justifiable reason.
(photo by Lee Bey)
If you found yourself down North Western Avenue in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood, you couldn't help but notice Joseph Zeman. The elderly man was always there. Always surrounded by pigeons. Sometimes only a few birds...other times, enough to have made Tippi Hedren cross the street.
The Chicago Tribune reports today that Zeman, 77, was killed yesterday when he was struck by a van exiting a parking lot at Devon Avenue and McCormick Road. The Tribune's Barbara Mahany--a mighty fine writer whose talents I've always admired--profiled Zeman in this 2004 piece.
(photos by Lee Bey)
For a moment or two earlier in my journalism career, I really considered becoming a police officer. It was 1988. I was 22 and working for the City News Bureau of Chicago and making as little money as allowed by law. I was assigned to Area 4 that summer, covering crime and everything else on the West Side when a pair of young black patrol officers befriended me. Almost like slightly older brothers.
"Man, the rock you are trying to climb has teeth marks all over it," the talkative one told me, telling me a successful career in journalism would be difficult to achieve because I am black. "You need to take the test, come over here and advance. You are smart."
He didn't even have to say it paid more than what I was making then. We both knew that.
"Officer Lee Bey." "Wentworth Area Violent Crimes Det. Lee Bey." "Sgt. Lee Bey." "Lt. Lee Bey." I remember scribbling all that out on a piece of paper, just to try it on for size. "Lt. Bey" sounded good. "Detective Bey" sounded really good.
But the reality is, being a good Chicago cop is a tough ass job. And I say that with respect and acknowledgment. How would I do in a traffic stop on dark night? Or how would I deal with someone I'd have to physically remove? Could I shoot somebody if I had to? Could I not shoot somebody? (And could I tell the difference between the two situations in a split second?) But still, a part of me wondered what might have been. Heck, I'd be coming on 20 years had I joined the department in 1988. Maybe I'd be ready to retire at 42. (Hey, wait a minute..)
All photography is self-portraits, a wise woman told me a few months ago. And it's true. Police frequently wind up in what I shoot. It must be something subliminal.
(Above) A stop at 87th and Cottage Grove.
(Above) A very friendly mounted police woman I met when I was in Amsterdam back in 2005.
(Above) A ballet in blue: Police officer at 8th and State, directing traffic.
(Above): The Commander of the Jefferson Park District police station, relaxing in a breakroom. I took this for an architectural firm earlier this year.
(Above) Police captain (?) on a Segway, directing pedestrian traffic after a May Day protest.
(Above) Cop on the street on a cold day on Dearborn north of Randolph
(photos by Lee Bey)
(photo by Lee Bey)
Alright, enough then...the last few entries have been photos I've taken of women. And despite the encouraging e-mail I've gotten about this new tact, I think I should return the blog to its roots. But not before presenting one more person
photo by Lee Bey
So yesterday, to make up for me not having anything architectural to post, I decided to run a photo of a female singer I'd photographed. And lo and behold, I noticed the number of visitors to my page increased a bit.
I'm intrigued by this. So I'll try it again today. This a Erlinda Garcia, a tradeshow model and singer I photographed last month.
I'll get back to architecture, I promise.
(photo by Lee Bey)
I haven't been updating the blog as I should. The day job has kept me busy. I apologize.
So from my "people" file, here's a photograph I took of Chicago singer/songwriter Dawn Xiana Moon.
(photos by Lee Bey)
I am looking through a collection of portraits and "people shots" I've taken during the past four years or so. A pattern emerges. A fair amount of them are Chicago architects. Nothing formal, just images grabbed here and there.
The architect above is Mark Sexton of Krueck + Sexton Architects. The firm handled the stellar restoration of IIT's Crown Hall and was giving a tour of the building durings its re-openining in August 2005 when I took this photo.
This is Dirk Lohan in his office at Lohan Anderson Architects, May 2006. I was interviewing him for a book I'm writing and we got on a discussion about Mies van der Rohe---Dirk's grandfather, of course---and the IBM Building. Dirk begins to sketch how Mies sited the building over the tricky riverfront site. I also note that he is a fellow lefty and over the years I've found a lot of architects are. More than the average population, I wonder?
This is architect Dina Griffin, principal of Interactive Design. Her firm is the local architect of the Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing, now under construction at the Art Institute of Chicago.
This is Ralph Johnson of Perkins & Will with Helmut Jahn of Murphy/Jahn Architects in the background. I took this in July of 2004 during a planning session for the book Visionary Architecture, published by the Chicago Central Area Committee. I was director of governmental affairs at SOM then, was asked to write an essay for the book. Three years later, I am now executive director of Central Area Committee.
Richard Tomlinson, a managing partner at Skidmore Owings & Merrill. I took this in December 2004 in Detroit as we were walking across some kind of skybridge at 1001 Woodward. We were in town checking out the last bit of work being done as part of SOM's renovation of Renaissance Center.
Above is Adrian Smith seated in a Barcelona chair in the lobby of this new firm, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture during a visit I took there earlier this summer.
And here is Santiago Calatrava, designer of the proposed Chicago Spire, photographed by me last year at Perkins & Will.
And this young woman--okay, is not an architect. I was just making sure some of you were still paying attention.
Seriously, I have to keep looking through the collection. Back in 2003 when I was working for the mayor's office, I took Calatrava on a tour of the lakefront in hopes of getting him to design pedestrian bridges here. I photographed him a few sites, including the North Avenue Bridge and on parts of the South Lakefront. But I took them on film and never got the pix developed! I know the undeveloped film is around here somewhere...