Slavic Village Revisited - Generation JPEG

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These images are from Foreclosure, an old project of mine featuring foreclosed homes in Cleveland's Slavic Village, one of the neighborhoods hit hardest by the housing crisis. Aproximately 2,000 of the 8,000 homes in Slavic Village lie vacant.

One of the disturbing things about these homes was their new-ness. Though they were abandoned, they were almost all structurally sound, and many of them weren't in any sort of outward disrepair. In revisiting these images I wanted to express a sense of age and wear that was felt in person, but may not have come through in the original 35mm photographs.

These are 400th generation JPEGs.

35mm Pinhole Photographs

As promised, here are some shots from my latest venture into the realm of pinhole photography. This time they were taken on a new creation of mine, a 35mm pinhole camera made from a plastic (toy) imitation SLR that I found in a thrift store here in Chicago. I think it was $4. Anyway, it allows me to shoot rolls of 35mm film using a pinhole.

I got the negatives put on a CD at Walgreens this time, probably not gonna do that again though as there's a line across one set of negatives that definitely was from the Walgreens machine, and I get enough artifacts using the pinhole as it is without adding unwanted digital noise.

Regardless, that line isn't on the pictures displayed below, so enjoy. More to come.





Here's the camera that took them.

Headshot

Here's a headshot I did recently for Rafael Martinez, a local theater actor applying to grad school. If you need headshots and you're in the Chicago area, drop me a line.

Frozen River

Here's some shots of the ice on the Chicago River.

Portrait Photography - Sarah Swanger

Here are some portraits of Sarah Swanger, circa fall 2006.

House Jams

Here's some photographs from a few months ago, back when musicians used to congregate in my house daily.

Digital Pinhole Photography

Here's the results of my first dive into digital pinhole photography. More to come, you can count on it.

Looking for a car?

Check this one out, somewhere on N. Racine St, Chicago. It's probably cheap...

Hello Chicago!

I've been in Chicago about 9 days now. It's been as cold as -9 degrees, -13 with wind chill. Besides that, it's been great. Here's the view out our cigarette smoking window.

Night Landscapes (long exposures)

Here are some 40 minute exposures of the winter Ohio landscape, between the hours of midnight and 5:00am.

Slavic Village

Cleveland is one of the cities that was hit hardest in the country by the recent mortgage crisis, with more people fleeing Cuyahoga County in the last few years than any other county besides Orleans County (Katrina, ya know?). One of the neighborhoods in Cleveland most affected is Slavic Village. Right now an estimated 2,000 properties stand vacant out of a total of around 8,000. Most of these are residential, and while some have been leveled by the city, hundreds of homes stand boarded up and abandoned. I took some time this fall to get to know the area, and photographed over a hundred of the vacant homes and vacant lots that pepper the area. Here are some of those photographs.

Special thanks to Jim Rokakis, the treasurer of Cuyahoga County, Anthony Zajac, a member of the Slavic Village Development Corporation, and William Rybak for making this possible.

Class Picture

Here's the male half of my final photography class at Oberlin College out on a shoot at an abandoned amusement park. When you've gotta go, you've gotta go.

Long Exposure Reshoot

Here's a first look at the reshoot I did last night to replace the exposed roll (see below). Another 40min shot.

ruined negatives are the WORST

Check out these 40min exposure that were exposed when the tank was accidentally opened just prior to developing.

Orange Army Man

Another from my Army Man series. This one in particular looks much nicer in the non-digital print. In person it has a really vibrant flame-orange in the background.

Purple Army Man

Here's another from my Army Man series.