Hampton Avery Architects

Lost City

If you have not done so, move post haste to look at the photographs by Charles Cushman archived at Indiana University. You may have seen them written about here and here. Cushman lived in Chicago in the middle of the last century and photographed voraciously. The photographs in the archive cover the globe, but it is the mid century Chicago photos I found most fascinating.

Viewing them, a thought coalesced about the city and cultural memory. Cushman’s pictures are images of a lost city. It occupies the same geographic space of present day Chicago, but there is very little that feels familiar. The city that seeps out of the pictures is unknown and unknowable. The people who knew the city left it for greener pastures and we moved into the shell. The city has a permanent case of amnesia.

(more…)