Red Line Service, Chicago, IL
The city is a place of everything, but a good street photographer makes it about something specific. Deborah Awwad’s pictures of downtown Chicago reveal it to be a metropolis that quite literally shapes the people who live here. We know this to be true metaphorically, but metaphor can be hard to see, and Awwad renders it visible by making it literal: the hole-punched window screen of a bus fragments a little kid riding a bike; a gleaming metal globe in Millennium Park shrinks and bulges the skyscrapers lining the park’s avenues; a shiny helmet, worn above layers of beaded necklaces, catches and warps the image of a man standing on a street corner. None of us is immune to these transformations, least of all the photographer herself, pictured as a silhouette reflected in a puddle, itself geometrically reconfigured by a sewer grate.
—Lori Waxman 10/5/2024 2:03 PM