Chicago El Stories
"Chicago El Stories" was commissioned by the Chicago Transit Authority for the new Brown Line elevated train station located at Armitage and Sheffield (in Chicago). The source material for this piece was a series of interviews that I conducted on the platform of the old Armitage station between February and April of 2007. Commuters were asked to share a memory or a place of significance from their lives in Chicago. The locations described in their storieswere then photographed and each image was paired with an excerpt of text from the corresponding interview.
In the finished piece, each pairing is presented as a 20 x 24 inch glass photographic tile. The backdrop for these tiles also consists of photographic glass tiles which depict the street grid for the area surrounding the station. The finished installation is 10 x 45 feet and has an estimated lifespan of 100 years.
Recordings of the complete original interviews and the photographs that were inspired by them are available at: