Locations
I had no plans of photographing the nativities under the elevated train tracks. I just want them on dumpsters. Walking south down the alley behind the auto supplies store, I scope out the dumpsters for their visual appeal. I didn’t want them too clean. They needed to be roughed up a bit. And preferably some sort of interesting background.
As I approached the tracks at the Western brown line stop, it seemed very natural that the train tracks should be in the photo. The train tracks add another element of shelter. At that point it became obvious that all my shots should have the train tracks in them. It adds a little bit of an artist background (Chicago) and also gives more of the urban feel that I wanted to portray.
After grabbing some decent shots behind the Chicago Printermakers’ Collaborative. I didn’t walk west, because the tracks start to go ground level, so I go east towards Damen. The majority of my photos are of the dumpsters between Damen and Western.
One of the cool things that I like about walking underneath the L at the Western stop is that all the musicians walk that way. The Old Town School of Music is just around the corner.
Chicago’s alley system is one key feature that sets itself apart from New York City. Chicago was purposely designed with alleys so that the garbage is out of sight, out of mind, and out of smell unlike NYC.