Early studies in urban and labor history, and an appreciation for the esthetics of old industrial infrastructure layered with urban renewal feed Cialdella's interest in post-industrial cities.
Photographer Gary Cialdella grew up on the Eastern edge of the Calumet in Blue Island, Illinois. When he left for college, he had no thoughts of returning, but as an adult he moved to nearby Michigan. More than 20 years ago, he reacquainted himself with the area and began photographing it. He recently released his book of black-and-white landscapes, The Calumet Region: An American Place (University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago/Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University). The work is also on display at the Brauer Museum of Art through March 21, 2010. (To see more of Cialdella's Calumet images, visit PDN Photo of the Day.)
An interest in the American social landscape, derived from his early studies in urban and labor history, feeds Cialdella's personal work and drew him to the Calumet. "As I got into this [project] I realized that just about everything that you could say about the United States at this particular time and place, regarding these older industrial areas, is right here in front of me," he says.
Esthetically, the inherent contrast between old infrastructure and the changes in the landscape appealed to Cialdella, who is also a professional architectural photographer. Yet his proximate upbringing added an emotional element to his work in the Calumet, and he tried to convey how he felt about the area as he got to know it as an adult.
"This is an extensive environment," Cialdella relates, "and if you want to get off these side roads and go close to the mills and do a little trespassing, something I didn't do as a kid, you just see things in a different light."
His photographs of post-war houses are a prime example of the balance he struck throughout the project between subjective and objective. Though he shot the houses using a typological approach, standing in roughly the same position at street level, the houses represented more than simply interesting examples of vernacular architecture. "They speak back to me," Cialdella says. "What I'm after in these houses is the same sort of thing I'd be after in a portrait of a person. The idea is that you get a sense that you're not looking at them, but they're looking at you."
Among the formal photographs of smokestacks reaching into the sky, and black train trestles bridging the waterways and canals, Cialdella mixes in images of advertising. Numerous alcohol and tobacco signs, an image on a rock radio station billboard of a busty groupie in an AC/DC tank top, her head cropped off, and a building-sized poster for an area beauty pageant reflect the values of the struggling area.
Cialdella also included several images of churches, some impoverished and others holding onto their grandeur.
"I think that other people in other regions will recognize these as a part of our history and our culture, and as a way of looking at contemporary society and seeing that these place in the last 20 years are still there and in some form chugging along," Cialdella says.
Images of carnival fireworks and members of a new generation of Calumet residents at the beaches on Lake Michigan, the smokestacks and refineries in the distance, end the story on a positive note.
In his essay in the book, Cialdella relates that he still goes to the Calumet often. "Like so much of America, it is both sad and hopeful," he writes.
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PDN Photo of The Day: Cialdella's Calumet Region (8 Photos)
