David Schalliol’s Isolated Buildings Studies

David Schalliol’s Isolated Building Studies >Furniture and Tires, originally uploaded by juggernautco.

David Schalliol is an editor at Gapers Block, where I am a staff writer . I have followed his Isolated Buildings Series since I started there in February, and I think it’s a really important work. Here’s how he describes the series:

These isolated building studies are an exploration of the physical manifestations of neighborhood change. In these images, I employ a wide angle lens and nearly uniform composition to provide context as well as emphasize the apparent concrete commonality of community disinvestment, stasis and reinvestment. This formal similarity is contradicted by further examination of each image.

There are a number of important aspects what he does, as far as I’m concerned:

• Most of the images are from the South Side of Chicago, near where he lives, and where economic development has lagged. Most of these areas are now seeing investments that will transform them over the next few decades and his series is going to be an important historical record
• Aside from this look-how-much-the-neighborhood-has-grown aspect of the work, lots of the buildings he captures are beautiful just from an architectural point of view. He’s capturing buildings that may be gone soon. Pure archival Richard Nickel permanent record-type stuff
• He’s documenting architectural isolation but you can’t look at the photos without thinking about the emotional, economic, and physical isolation that must go along with it
• Just from a technical/ compositional point of view, he really takes stunning photographs that elevate and aggregate these places into a collection of art

I wrote to him a while ago and asked if I could tag along with him next
time he went out to do his stuff. Document the documentarian, so to speak. We got out last week in the areas around 63rd, Stony Island, Calumet, State Street, etc. I had never been in this area, and it was great for me because it was a treasure trove of one of my obsessions– faded painted advertising on walls.

So I caught him catching his shots and talked about what he does and how he does it. Here’s some notes about how he chooses his subjects:.

• Preference for no cars or other items in the foreground (there are exceptions)  
• The building must be shot parallel to the front façade
• Edges of the subject building must be visible (and in the same composition)
• No buildings on adjacent lots
• Any other buildings in frame must not show their front façades
• Ideally, the buildings are somewhat interesting architecturally or in some land use
• The building must have been built in the context of other buildings which have since disappeared for one reason or another (i.e. a mansion with a lot of space between it and its neighbors doesn’t count). That’s why this shot didn’t make it into the series
• Mainly interested in buildings in the middle of a block. As a rule, not interested in buildings on corners, unless the lot across the street is empty, too, and he can capture that in the photoHe also takes other documentary photos of buildings that are in disrepair, soon gone, or otherwise interesting. Some other tidbits I gleaned: