Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Home Alone ~ David Shalliol

Isolated Building Study #22 (2007). Photograph © David Shalliol.

I recently received the alumni magazine from the University of Chicago where I went to graduate school. Typically the magazine contains little of interest. This time, though, you can find this really terrific story on a graduate student in Sociology, David Shalliol, who is using photography in really interesting ways. There is an accompanying slide show of his work here. You can find a lot more of Shalliol's images here on his Flickr page. I especially recommend the interactive map feature.

I find these images fascinating because they capture buildings as artifacts - residuals, as it were - of large scale aggregate processes, both demographic and political-economic. It is interesting in that regard to contrast his work to that of someone like Chris Jordan who takes quite different photographic approaches to such aggregate phenomena. This is really thought provoking work.