16 Apr a visual record of chicago’s 19th and early 20th century disappearing landscape through documentation and salvage

with over 500,000 photographic images chronicling the destruction of chicago’s 19th and early 20th century commercial and residential structures taken over the 20 past years, i’ve decided it’s long overdue to begin the arduous task of mining the data to create a structured database where any and all images will be assigned comprehensive descriptions and/or narratives based on my recollections of everything i’ve seen and experienced in places that exist in artifact and/or photographic form.

while looking through seemingly endless folders, with many nearly two decades old, i began randomly selecting images from various architectural salvages i documented to reacquaint myself to begin piecing together what i hope will be an easily navigable database arranged in chronological order, beginning with my first salvage, to my most current. whether this body of work will be useful to others remains to be seen, but i must start somewhere.

further reading: