When I began photographing the Chicago River, in 1999, I had no preconceived ideas of what I would find or what kinds of images I would create. Nor, did I imagine that this voyage of discovery would consume more than ten years of my life. I became captivated by three aspects of the river: its history and evolution, its diverse and ever-changing uses, and its visual beauty (at times belying the dilapidated, stinking remnants of the its industrial past). Within ruin and decay, I found beauty and order. The trilogy of function, change, and beauty were to become the common threads of the project.
Chicago, for much of its history, used its river for industrial and commercial purposes, such as transportation of raw materials and finished goods, and waste disposal. Innumerable factories and shops producing products of all kinds, together with warehouses, stockyards, and meatpacking plants lined the river. Together with these businesses, the residents of the city also dumped their waste into the river, turning it into a noxious sewer, which emptied into Lake Michigan in close proximity to where the city obtained its drinking water. Every year many people died from dysentery, typhus, and other diseases. The New York Times called the Chicago River: “This sinkhole of unspeakable filth and the laughing stock of the nation”. To protect its water supply, the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Greater Chicago between 1889 and 1910 built the Sanitary and Ship Canal, which reversed the flow of the river away from the lake and into the Des Plaines River, which flows into the Mississippi River, and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. This project was hailed as one of the engineering marvels of the age and saved countless lives.
Over the past several years the industrial uses of the Chicago River have all but disappeared, and the riverbanks are now a popular place to live and play. A surprising number of obsolete industrial and commercial properties have been converted into parks with flowers and trees, paths, and fishing spots. Fish have returned to many locations where the water was previously too polluted to support them. Downtown, many older industrial and commercial buildings have been converted to condominiums and offices, and a great number of new buildings have been constructed. At the onset of the 21st century I felt an urgent need to document the Chicago River before all the remnants of Chicago’s past were replaced by the new and polished city.