Left: Mural Detail with Cars, Chicago 2007
Right: Red Car and Mural, Chicago 2005
© Gary Cialdella
The Pilsen Project
by Gary Cialdella
My photography is in the social landscape tradition. I work intuitively, searching out meanings in a variety of places and regions, always with the intent of evoking as sense of place. The Pilsen* series, takes place in Chicago’s largest Latino neighborhood. There’s a visual vibrancy in this Mexican-American community that flows from the Mexican inhabitants’ refashioning the neighborhood to celebrate their culture and heritage. The affect of this is like a stage set, only in this place the scenes change as you walk the streets – Chicago streets, with all the excess and complexity of contemporary American culture.
For this series, working in both black and white and color allowed me to more fully reveal the confluence of art and daily life present in Pilsen. Merging the monochrome and color images into diptychs, the graphic juxtaposed with ritualistic color, I could best express the sensory affect I felt being in this community. The city’s linear streetscape is a part of the rich visual complexity of the neighborhood. I used the panoramic camera to emphasize the linear flow of changing scenes in the city streets and alleys. The diptychs and panoramas combine to evince the everyday flow of life expressed in the theatricality of the murals and graffiti that enliven this neighborhood.
*From the late 19th Century to the present the neighborhood has been the immigrant’s gateway to the city, and to achieving the American dream. The earlier immigrants that settled in Pilsen were German and Eastern Europeans, of Czech and Polish ancestry. The name Pilsen comes from the Czech city of the same name.