Monday 1 October 2018

Illinois Route 43

So yes, I took the head-staggers early August and decided it was time I paid The Brother a visit.  It was certainly my turn, since it was nearly 4 years since I was there.  Due to his work commitments (not mine, anymore) it was either go now or go between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  When I was last there, for a couple of weeks around Thanksgiving, the cold was so intense it was bone-numbing.  I mean we think it gets cold here in the North-West of Ireland but no, we get damp, we get wet, we get chilly but we don't get cold, not Chicago-cold.  So I checked the cheapest flight from Dublin and the deal was done. American Airlines, by the way. And they were good - very good, actually. I’ll say more about the actual travelling in a future post.

I knew it would be hot, in Illinois,in August.  And I wasn't disappointed.  It was hot - very.  That's from the perspective of an Irishman, of course...  It got up to the mid-90s on most days and the humidity was pretty high.  Hot enough and humid enough to make be feel very queasy most of the time, to be honest.  I enjoyed spending time with my brother but I didn't enjoy the heat.  Do you get the feeling I don't like the climate in Chicago much?  I'm sure it's lovely for a couple of weeks in April or May and similarly around late September/early October but the rest of the year it's either too hot or too cold for me.  I can't help it - I'm just used to the temperate climate we get here in Ireland, where it rarely gets hotter than the mid-70s Fahrenheit or drops much below freezing.  When I got home, late August, we had a couple of days with the temperature around 60 degrees and I was very, very comfortable - I could breathe again!

Anyway, time for a scan of one of the prints you might have seen the other day resting on my home-made drying rack in the darkroom.

IL-43 as it cuts through Oak Park, Illinois
Illinois Route 43 is, apparently, a major north-south road through Illinois.  Although I've been to Illinois more times than I can remember in order to visit The Brother I can't say I'm overly confident knowing whether we're driving north, south, east or west - unless I get a glimpse of the Willis Tower or one of them big tall skyscraper things in the distance, that is, which is a dead giveaway since they are due East of Oak Park where The Brother lives.  It would probably be different if I was the one behind the wheel, but I leave that to him.  This particular day I went for a dander around 'The Village' of Oak Park but it doesn't look remotely like the villages we get here in Ireland.  It's famous as the birth-place of Ernest Hemingway and for having a number of houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  As the name would suggest it's a leafy old town, about a 20 minute drive from the city of Chicago.

Believe it or not, it was the roadsign informing everyone of the fact that you are on Illinois Route 43 (aka Harlem Avenue right here) that caught my eye - not the rather leggy young girl strolling towards me.  I did wonder about waiting another second or two until she came up a bit closer but since I was using the Hasselblad, which has a mirror slap about as subtle as a brick I decided to trip the shutter then and there.  Printed on 9.5"x12" Adox MCC fibre paper - a first for me and very nice it is too.  Mild sepia tone.  HP5+ of course, developed in RO9, in case you're interested in that sort of stuff.



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4 comments:

  1. Jim Grey1 October 2018 at 13:06

    The lovely thing about the Chicago suburbs is that many of them started as towns well outside Chicago, and had their own substance and identities long before Chicagoland grew to swallow them up. My wife is from one of those suburbs, a town called St. Charles. We visited a couple years ago and it was just charming.

    Though Indianapolis is only about three or four hours away, its suburbs are a different story. The little towns surrounding Indianapolis were farm towns or rail stops with not a lot going on. And then the builders came to build neighborhoods around them and people moved out of the city into those neighborhoods. And then town leaders thought, "Gee golly, we've got something here" and have built gleaming *new* downtowns.

    Except for Zionsville, where I live. There's some real wealth here (not mine, sadly) and our downtown really is old-school charming.

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    1. Michael McNeill3 October 2018 at 10:25

      What a great name, Zionsville. Conjures up all sorts of images of hope and history. I haven't travelled around Illinois and Indiana as much as I would have liked - for the most part I seem to be content to stick around Oak Park with the odd foray into the city of Chicago. For a quick trip that's usually enough.

      I'll be saying more about Oak Park in the next post, coming up soon.

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  2. Roy Karlsvik2 November 2018 at 23:17

    I think I might have just taken the chance and waited for another three secs before I slammed that shutter, Michael... but then again it's easy to sit here and say, I know :)
    A damn fine print it is, no matter how you look at it, and that road sign looks like a millon dollar! A great composition, my friend.

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    Replies
    1. Michael McNeill5 November 2018 at 10:24

      Yeh in hindsight I wish I had waited a little longer, but you know how this thing works - you can't go back! ;)

      Thanks for the positive comments, again :)

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