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| Saul Leiter Rain ca. 1953 silver dye-bleach print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Saul Leiter Canopy 1958 silver dye-bleach print Art Institute of Chicago |
"Saul Leiter was a painter and photographer associated with the New York School of photography during the second half of the 20th century. Unlike other photographers of that time, who focused on capturing urban anxiety, Leiter sought out a serene, poetic beauty in his images of the city. The use of color film also set him apart from most of his contemporaries, although the almost monochromatic cityscape seen here takes his already subdued palette to an extreme, leaving only the brake lights of the car as a reminder of color. Leiter heightened the drama of pedestrians battling a snowstorm by cropping the scene with the outline of the canopy under which he took the photograph."
– curator's notes from the Art Institute of Chicago
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| Saul Leiter Snow Window 1959 silver dye-bleach print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Richard Nickel Untitled (Bayard Building, Ornament of Cornice) ca. 1950-60 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Richard Nickel Untitled (Garrick Theater, Exterior before Demolition) ca. 1955 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Richard Nickel Untitled (W.H. Potter House, Exterior Detail) ca. 1950-70 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Richard Nickel Untitled (Self-portrait atop the Republic Building) 1960 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
"A Chicago native, Richard Nickel took up photography while in the army, and when he returned in 1948 he enrolled in the Institute of Design. The ID, as it was called, had been founded as the New Bauhaus in 1937, and drew both staff and avant-garde education ideas from the original German Bauhaus, which had closed in 1933. Nickel studied first under Harry Callahan and later with Aaron Suskind, a legendary teaching duo who stressed a thorough knowledge of photographic technique and form in the service of individual expression. . . . "I prefer to be completely left out as the maker or interpreter," Nickel once wrote. He mounted strenuous campaigns to save buildings, and when those failed worked long hours to rescue ornament. When he died in that attempt in the Stock Exchange Building in 1972, the Sun-Times wrote: "Richard Nickel has become a true martyr to the cause of architectural preservation. He is irreplaceable, and Chicago architecture has lost its truest champion."
– from an exhibition catalogue issued by the Art Institute of Chicago
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| Richard Nickel Untitled (Troescher Building Ornament) ca. 1957-65 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Danny Lyon Uptown, Chicago 1965 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Danny Lyon Uptown, Chicago 1965 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Danny Lyon Corky and Funny Sonny, Chicago 1966 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Danny Lyon Boy with Dog, Knoxville, Tennessee 1967 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
"Forty years on, Lyon bemoans the loss of the America that opened up to him then. Homogeneity, he feels, is the modern curse. "If you're in love with the road, it doesn't really exist much any more – or you've really got to work to find it," he says. "Try going around America now. You're trapped in a nightmarish existence of food chains and chain motels." . . . Brightening slightly, Lyon recalls a conversation with Hugh Edwards, curator of photography at the Art institute of Chicago, and a formative influence on both himself and [Robert] Frank. Lyon told Edwards of a trip he'd made to Houston where he'd seen miles of new tract housing and ugly architecture. "I said to him, 'They're destroying America.' And he says to me, 'Nothing is ever complete.'"
– from a profile by Edward Helmore in the The Guardian (London), 2012
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| Danny Lyon IRT 2, South Bronx, New York City 1979 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Keith Carter Peacocks, Tyler County 1988 gelatin silver print Harvard Art Museums |
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| Keith Carter Alligator Snapping Turtle, Tyler County 1989 gelatin silver print Harvard Art Museums |