Fine Art
Crossing into the subterranean landscape that makes up the vein-like lines of the Chicago el, a burst of air passes over you. Sometimes the air is cold…and dry… and odorless, the way a ghost might feel if it were to rush past you. It hits you when you’re halfway down the stairs. In warmer months, the air is hot and sticky; it smells of kitty litter, of stale bread and sometimes the faintest hint of piss. There is yet another staircase to traverse to get onto the platform. Long… and dark…and hard.
One evening I was standing at the Monroe platform. There were others waiting with me and I was glancing towards the staircase in the distance. An elderly gentleman in a business suit was making his way down. From the corner of my eye I witnessed something. He fell...He tumbled down the last six steps or so and came to rest as a crinkled heap at the bottom of the concrete stairs, on the filthy ground. I rushed towards him to help, but I wasn’t close. As he struggled to get up, there were people who watched this man’s most embarrassing and precarious situation unfolded, and did nothing. People nearby didn’t even lend a hand to help this man up onto his feet or ask if he was okay. By the time I got close he had risen and sullenly walked over near the tracks, he had a slight limp then. I could see his pale blue eyes had begun to water slightly and his thin white hair was somewhat disheveled now, his pride and sense of humanity broken. And mine too.
This moment elicited a strong response from inside me and I began to think. Someone loves this man. He goes home at night and there are people who care about whether or not he makes it. Someone buys this man birthday presents, and sends him cards and embraces him. I imagined someone who I loved and cared about falling down those steps. I imagined my father, my grandfather, on the ground. Not a soul coming to their aid. I couldn’t stand it.
I do not want to live in a place, city, country or world where this happens. Being a human being means being a highly evolved and capable creature: capable of understanding hardships of human existence, capable of making deep connections to other people and perfectly capable of helping this fallen man. I do not want to exist in a place where I witness my fellow species act as cold, smug, unfeeling zombies. What have we forgotten? How have we learned to be so automatic?
I believe that being emotionless and indifferent is not human nature. I believe that to act this way, a person has to learn how. The teachers of this viciousness are systems that we all support. They are powerful and manipulative to be sure, but what they lack is having human nature on their side.
People don’t like to be told what to think or how to act. That is partly why certain governments and institutions of influence have enacted tactics that seek to hide their true motives. The motive is control over the masses. But we are not just masses. Deep down I think people know that with each amendment, each new policy we are relinquishing a portion of our allowed courses of action.
Art is a language that can be spoken and understood by every single human. When I first began taking photographs my goal was to illuminate details of human life that usually go unnoticed. Simple and unevolved as it was, it grew into something bigger and rooted more in history and knowledge, with a grasp of the human and global condition. It doesn’t always take much to jostle people from their self-involved comas. Through my art I seek to do just that.
