David Schalliol and Isolated Buildings of Chicago

David Schalliol cap­tures us with his unex­pec­ted angle. His art involves archi­tec­ture, soci­ology, his­tory and pho­to­graphy. I chose to talk about this author because pho­to­graphy in his hands is just one piece of a big­ger thing. And that piece helps to depict and ana­lyse the con­text. Maybe these pic­tures, done in Chicago, will attract you with its aes­thet­ics, but there is a lot more in it.

David Schalliol is American who spent a part of his life study­ing soci­ology. During the last few years he explored sur­round­ings in the vicin­ity of Chicago, researched ques­tions about loc­al­ity, tried to under­stand his­tor­ical, polit­ical and archi­tec­tural con­texts of the city, and inter­viewed local res­id­ents. Photographs added to this post are series of “Isolated Building Studies“. We know really well which part of the city is con­sidered pres­ti­gi­ous, which is sub­urbs and where youth like to gather. Probably every one of us has noticed that there are build­ings which are like for­eign bod­ies, they look like they were left here for no reason at all, lost their func­tion, or maybe didn’t even had one, and now are serving a dif­fer­ent pur­pose alto­gether. They are some­how dif­fer­ent, maybe they are ali­en­ated, maybe aban­doned, maybe remind­ing about already for­got­ten his­tor­ical period, maybe just unsolved archi­tec­tural dilemma..

Buildings that are out of gen­eral city­scape con­text are doc­u­mented really accur­ately in these pic­tures. Not only they tell a story about every single his­tor­ical path, but also remind us all that we should be inter­ested in what is hap­pen­ing around us, what happened before and what will hap­pen in the future. The main prob­lem about con­tem­por­ary archi­tec­ture is that when archi­tect gets com­mis­sioned, he thinks only about his pro­ject as indi­vidual cre­ation, which has to look good, clean and mainly be wanted. Not many people think about gen­eral face of the city. At the same time pho­to­graphy only serves as advert­ise­ment and nice mater­ial for present­ing the projects.

Exploration of aban­doned and isol­ated build­ings is very inter­est­ing and fas­cin­at­ing. It can give you a lot of answers and ques­tions about soci­ety, social­ity and local neigh­bour­hood. Next time you hurry to your train sta­tion I sug­gest tak­ing a closer look at aban­doned places and spaces around you, just think what happened to it and what will prob­ably hap­pen soon. You will be sur­prised of how many ideas you can get out of it.

More info you can find here.

About author:

Gintarė Žitkevičiūtė
Gintare Zitkeviciute is Art Pit’s thinker and doer. In her work practise, she values lean approach, creativity and quick decisions. She doesn't like working with random people and thinks that a team is a heart of successful project. For that reason, she carefully picks people she works with on everyday basis. She is mostly interested in innovatio... Read further >