Reflections on “Opening Passages”: Photographers Respond to Chicago and Paris

Born in 1978 in Tarnów, Poland

Lives and works in Chicago, USA

Recipient in 2023 of the Chicagoland Seen grant commission funded by the Chicago chapter of the Albertine Foundation

Series: Return

“To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was.’ It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.” This reflection from Walter Benjamin on the evanescent character by which history reappears as an image from within our collective memory has served as a helpful analogy for Chicago-based artist Marzena Abrahamik to describe her Return series. When the artist was five years old, her mother fled communist Poland for the United States amid a period of economic crisis. Abrahamik stayed behind with her father, taking up refugee status in Greece for several years, while her mother sought U.S. citizenship so that she could sponsor her family to join her. In total, it would be a decade before they were reunited.

This story of family separation is a familiar one in Chicago’s Polish community, which is historically anchored along the Milwaukee Avenue corridor on the city’s Near Northwest side. In Return, Abrahamik chronicles that migration in reverse. In recent years, after many years of living and working in Chicago, some immigrants are returning to Poland, where they are able to retire with a lower costs of living and a public healthcare system.

Uprooting and moving to a new country is a transformative experience, giving rise to a new identity that is wholly distinct even as groups of immigrants establish communities and seek to preserve traditions tied to their homeland. Rather than reclaiming one’s former self, enacting this process in reverse results in yet another shift in identity. To access these complex processes of cultural translation, Abrahamik’s images speak through a grammar of symbols and icons tied to Polish life and traditions. A group of red poppies, a pair of swans, or a framed portrait of the Catholic Pope resting on a wooden mantel become free-floating signifiers of Polish identity, whose meaning is at once fixed and fluid. –CF

Born in Los Angeles, USA

Lives and works in Chicago, USA

Recipient in 2023 of the Chicagoland Seen grant commission funded by the Chicago chapter of the Albertine Foundation.

Series: Immigrant Owned

According to recent U.S. Census data, one out of every five people currently residing in Chicago was born outside the United States. Throughout Chicago’s history, immigrants from throughout the world have been a central feature of the city’s social, cultural, and economic landscape. Since 2017, Jonathan Michael Castillo has been traversing Chicago and its suburbs, photographing the interiors of immigrant-owned shops and the people who run them. His approach is not systematic, resisting the sociologist’s or ethnographer’s impulse to classify his subjects into a comprehensive survey. Instead, the series presents a unique cross-section of Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods visualized through an eclectic mix of businesses. Each image—whether the portrait of a woman resting among the bulk boxes of takeout containers and fortune cookies in a Chinatown noodle shop, the gestural detail of mannequins adorned in Indian bridal gowns on Devon Street, or a vacant table with coffee and condiments at an Uptown Ethiopian restaurant—speaks through a culturally distinct set of symbols, icons, and even color palettes. Yet each also portrays common threads of labor and ingenuity amid a backdrop of economic precarity and aspiration—earnest expressions of the flagging American dream.

In recent years, Chicago’s status as a sanctuary city—which codifies protections for undocumented immigrants into municipal law—has made it a target for political attacks on the national stage. Castillo’s sensitive images counter these anti-immigrant narratives, presenting a dignified, multi-dimensional view of immigrant work in Chicago. –CF

Born in 1991 in Chicago, USA

Lives and works in Chicago, USA

Recipient in 2023 of the Chicagoland Seen grant commission funded by the Chicago chapter of the Albertine Foundation.

Series: in the open you are here

A scenic view of Lake Michigan from the Chicago shoreline may not seem like the basis for a socially radical work of art, but this is precisely the kind of quiet interventions into historically freighted domains of visual culture, such as landscape art, that zakkiyyah najeebah dumas-o’neal stages through her work. The artist combines still and moving images of bodies of water with archival images drawn from her own family and other community-built collections on Chicago’s South Side. Through these visual juxtapositions, dumas-o’neal engages in creative world-making, forwarding an aesthetic vision that finds a parallel in philosopher Kevin Quashie’s concept of “Black aliveness.” At its heart, this approach seeks to abandon the pervasive—though often implicit—frame of antiblackness that shapes so much of the contemporary discourse on race. As artistic meditations trained on self-realization and personal sovereignty, her works do not ignore the cultural prevalence of anti-black racism; instead, they challenge antiblackness as a default position that permeates our culture. To cite Quashie, “An antiblack world expects blackness from black people; in a black world, what we expect and get from black people is beingness.”

Through the visual grammar of gesture and landscape, these works point to the burden of history while also seeking to move beyond. In the artist’s words, the work “highlights the ways Black aliveness and interiority show up through vivid poetic observations of my relationship to the land, time, and the sublime—that my being and gaze isn’t inherently tied to trauma, marginality, or colonization, but at times beyond it.” In this way, dumas-o’neal is invested above all in being. –CF

Born in 1979 in Chicago, USA

Lives and works in Chicago, USA

2023 laureate of the national photographic commission Regards du Grand Paris (views of the Grand Paris), led by the Ateliers Médicis in collaboration with the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap)

Series: Belonging

When Ateliers Médicis invited Chicago-based artist and activist Tonika Lewis Johnson to participate in a residency in Clichy-sous-Bois, she seized the opportunity to expand her Belonging series into a transatlantic dialogue about racial divisions in the urban landscape. In 2018, Johnson posed a simple question to a group of teenagers of color living on Chicago’s South Side: “Where have you felt that you did not belong?” Then, she made portraits of her collaborators in the places they described, which she supplemented with audio recordings of their stories. The incidents–which include being questioned suspiciously at a Korean supermarket, getting pulled over for a trivial driving infraction, and watching a white woman clutch her purse while passing on a sidewalk–reflect shared experiences of exclusionary of racial profiling.

Clichy-sous-Bois, a majority non-white commune on the edge of Paris, mirrors Chicago’s South Side in terms of its racial dynamics. Indeed, the cultural affinity between the two locales runs so deep that many of the young people she met were well-versed in drill music, a rap genre originating on Chicago’s South Side. As anticipated, many of the young people Johnson met in Clichy could readily recount similar experiences of feeling excluded from public spaces. Through the process of doing these new works, however, she also observed a fundamental cultural difference in how race was understood in each country, with her French subjects seemingly much less inclined than their American counterparts in general terms to attribute social issues to racism rather than other social factors, a tendency she attributes to a cultural desire to preserve a unified French identity. Despite these distinctions, however, the stories reflect a shared experience. –CF

Born in 1988 in Brooklyn, New York, USA

Lives and works in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA

Invited in 2022 to benefit from a creative immersion residency at Ateliers Médicis

Series: UNTITLED AND YET TO BE DETERMINED

At the start of her residency in Clichy-sous-Bois in 2023, Sasha Phyars-Burgess set up a small darkroom at Le Centre Social Intercommunal de la Dhuys (CSID), a neighborhood hub that offers programs and social assistance for low-income residents. For two months, she used it as a base for processing her large-format black-and-white film negatives. Alongside her own artistic pursuits, she also offered workshops, teaching teens and other residents how to shoot, develop, and print photographs in the traditional way. Many of those people in turn became the subjects in her work.

This blending of creative pursuits with community building is integral to Phyars-Burgess’s art practice. Starting in 2018, she produced a series over several years depicting life in the South Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s far West Side. Throughout that time, she ran a video production group at READI Chicago, a non-profit jobs initiative directed at youth in areas prone to gun violence. The people she worked with became her photographic subjects and collaborators on videos projects, including her own Hail Mary, which blends footage of READI participant DJ Looney Givenchy (Steve Walker) with other clips she had gathered around Austin.

By one measure, it is tempting to frame these conceptually and thematically linked projects–one located in Chicago and one in Paris–as raw documents of the long-term social and economic disenfranchisement in economically isolated communities on the margins of the city. South Austin and Clichy-sous-Bois each struggle with high unemployment and lack of social investment. Despite these social undercurrents, however, what is perhaps more striking in these linked bodies of work is how they reverberate with presence and grace. With remarkable consistency, they are images that reward sustained looking. In this way, they are less documentary scenes meant to convey strength in spite of challenges (though they are surely this), and more photographs–in the best sense–of people and things thoughtfully seen. –CF

Born in 1983 in Bogota, Colombia

Lives and works in the Greater Paris area, France

2018 laureate of the national photographic commission Regards du Grand Paris (views of the Grand Paris), led by the Ateliers Médicis in collaboration with the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap)

Series: Territoire-Travail

The choreography of workers in Güiza-Rojas’ images suggests an idealized vision of manual labor. But these movements, frozen in action, are the images of what he calls, in another series devoted to the onsite workers of the Maladrerie neighborhood, “gestures of insertion”—with a dual meaning. The series, Territoire-Travail (Territory-Work), consists of five photographic collages in which a second image is “inserted” against an urban or interior backdrop, pasted, and adjusted so that the lines of the buildings or landscape are superimposed and extend from one frame to the next. In this assemblage, the worker’s body (invariably male) is sometimes truncated to focus on a particular technical gesture. All of these scenes were staged in and around the training centers of AFPA, the French National Agency for Adult Vocational Training, located in remote and often hard-to-reach areas of Île-de-France. It was here that Güiza-Rojas directed these performances with individuals undertaking vocational retraining—a necessary step towards integration, often at the cost of social downgrading from their original vocation. These training courses meet the constant labor needs of urban expansion.

One person becomes the gardener he once was, with a broom and polishing discs in place of a spade and lawn, while another re-enacts his job as an electrician with a lampshade held up to the sky in front of a construction site. In the video accompanying the photographs, Afpa, garde du corps (Afpa, bodyguard), a janitor repeats, in French and in his native language, expressions he used in his former job as a bodyguard, creating a discrepancy between his acquired trade, his former country, and his current situation. The many layers that make up the lives of individuals are materialized by the photo collages, the superimposition of settings, and the clash between their gestures, the settings, and the captions of the images. This incompatibility is then magnified by the contrast of colors and poses, recalling Jeff Wall’s photographic tableaux, while also demonstrating a genuine bond between the photographer and his models. –MN

Born in 1977 in Geneva, Switzerland

Lives and works in Lyon, France and Algeria

2017 laureate of the national photographic commission Regards du Grand Paris (views of the Grand Paris), led by the Ateliers Médicis in collaboration with the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap).

Series: Ligne Dée

Trained at the Écoles des Beaux-Arts of Avignon and Grenoble, as well as the Vevey School of Photography, Karim Kal intricately weaves pictorial inquiries with a critical examination of the territories abandoned by the great urbanist and political projects of the past. Diverging from the grandeur of minimalist canvases found in museum contexts, the abstraction within his images beckons us to delve into the intricacies of traces and visible clues.

As a night photographer, Karim Kal is not drawn to nocturnal activities; rather, his black-and-white images, illuminated by short-range flash, capture deserted spaces. Exploring vacant areas within working-class towns, he is dedicated to spaces that exist on the periphery of media attention, capturing moments that are themselves neglected. Through the images from his Ligne Dée (Dee line) series, Karim Kal traces a path inspired by Line D of the RER (Paris metropolitan and regional rail system), spanning from Grigny to Corbeil-Essonnes, the hometown of the musical group PNL, whose music accompanies his location scouting. At an exit in Evry station, he adopts the perspective of a commuter all-too-familiar with his environment. The frame leading out of the station opens into the night, yet the lighting inverts photographic centering: details unfold around a black hole. Surveillance cameras watch, a suspended screen turns its back, and a letterbox stands guard. Paths through the darkness lead to the roadside, where weeds dominate the foreground, and in the background, the metal structure of a shed emerges from the gray. The progress through this deserted urban space, both disturbing and strange, collides with a section of a wall, culminating in front of a facade obstructed by large panels. On closer inspection, it becomes apparent that this is a media library that got burnt down, situated in the Tarterêts neighborhood of Corbeil-Essonnes. Despite the apparent emptiness within the images, the shapes that emerge unveil the accidents of the environment—a dilapidated wall, graffiti, wild grass—serving as clues not only to socio-economic tensions but also to the life that permeates this landscape in the negative. –MN

Born in 1991 in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, France

Lives and works in the Greater Paris area, France

2021 laureate of the national photographic commission Regards du Grand Paris (views of the Grand Paris), led by the Ateliers Médicis in collaboration with the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap)

Series: RER B-ANLIEUES

A journalist and artist, Assia Labbas began developing her work in the visual arts in 2020 and has since pursued documentary installation work, combining still images, moving images, and sound. She joins photographic shots with a collection of testimonies staged in visual, audio and spatial arrangements. For her series RER B-ANLIEUES, Assia Labbas directs her focus to the northern part of the B line of the Regional express network. La Courneuve-Aubervilliers, Drancy, Le Blanc-Mesnil, Aulnay-sous-Bois, Villepinte: these names of stations are also names of towns, home to mobile populations, sometimes commuting long distances in the Île-de-France region for leisure, work or to meet up with friends and family. The iconic B Line is also a major axis that reflects the scale of the region’s sometimes striking socio-economic disparities. The color images unfold in a nineteen-minute slideshow reminiscent of a travelogue on an old Kodak Carousel. These views are accompanied by the voices of witnesses recounting their perceptions of the journey and their own perspectives of their environments, distinct from the clichés conveyed by the media.

The filmic slideshow shows us the places mentioned by the travelers or chosen by the artist in Seine-Saint-Denis. Alongside the film, the artist has recreated thirty-eight “fake” retro Kodachrome slides, which are presented in two backlit wooden structures evoking the shape of trains, with each window showing a piece of the landscape. One has to lean in closely to see the details, actively taking an interest in these places. The soundtrack echoes the ambient noise of the station—the sound of doors closing and fragments of commuters’ conversations. Through the micro-narratives of passengers, the installation lets the personal visions of their own journeys be heard. The landscapes and faces that they meet and recount recreate a visual and narrative psychogeography of Greater Paris. –MN

Born in 1980 in Rennes, France

Lives and works in Paris, France

2021 laureate of the national photographic commission Regards du Grand Paris (views of the Grand Paris), led by the Ateliers Médicis in collaboration with the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap)

Series: On est là

Marion Poussier’s work as a portrait photographer was interrupted during the Covid-19 lockdowns, restricting her, like the rest of the country, to a radius of one kilometer around her home. Within this constraint, she ventured into the areas surrounding the Canal Saint-Denis, a river axis connecting several urban spaces around the 19th arrondissement of Paris at its junction with the Seine in Saint-Denis. Poussier captured the essence of people and the traces of their presence along this dynamic route in a rapidly evolving urban environment, situated in the commune of Aubervilliers—one of the poorest areas in France.

Against a backdrop of urban graffiti—a recurring motif in almost every photo—two policemen dressed in bulletproof vests, their gazes masked behind sunglasses, oversee the deserted banks. Behind them, life seems to unfold, embodying the slogan On est là (We are here), also the title of a protest song during the yellow vest movement—whose implicit sense indicates that we must pay attention to it. A couple, Joy and Harry, find solace under a bridge, while a group of men engages in fishing near Le Millénaire shopping center. Simona, a young woman, cleans a carpet barefoot with canal water, and farther away, young men Tarek, Bogow, and D2 linger around a car. These individuals, sometimes with obscured faces, inhabit the canal as if it were a familiar space. Despite the seemingly happenstance nature of their presence, each person is identified by a first name. While we may speculate about their life stories—the reasons why Sissé, visibly exhausted, sleeps on a bollard or under what circumstances Ali ended up residing in a makeshift tent under a staircase remain unknown.

Ahmed picks roses; Omar, seen from behind and still wet, appears to have dived into the canal to cool off. Each of these situations is drawn from a life whose image reveals its inherent complexity. Captured at eye level, the twelve photographs that make up the series On est là frame individuals at the center of the image, within a fallow or abandoned landscape. Between grandiose urbanization projects and makeshift daily lives, Poussier gauges the gap that separates bodies within their environment from the abstraction of urban planning, ultimately placing individuals back in the heart of the place. –M

Born in 1989 in Vincennes

Lives and works between Yerevan (Armenia) and Paris

2021 laureate of the national photographic commission Regards du Grand Paris (views of the Grand Paris), led by the Ateliers Médicis in collaboration with the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap)

Series: (n=6–9)

Psittacofulvin, whose generic structure is designated by (n=6–9), is a pigment specific to parrots. It is dominant in rose-ringed parakeets, with their distinctive fluorescent green marking them as exotic animals in the European urban environment. These birds, originating from Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, have been widely established in European towns for several decades. Through a cargo accident at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport in 1974, the first generations were released in and around Paris. Rebecca Topakian has orchestrated an installation around these parakeets, combining photographs, text, and a tableau display. A work entitled Dortoir de perruches (Parakeet dormitory) shows the black-and-white photography of a well-defined space in Maisons-Alfort, a portion of street where hundreds of parakeets come to sleep. Two Études déraisonnées (Unreasoned studies) make up a collection of images captured on the fly with an Instax camera and another of found feathers, classified by size and color, following the visual codes of natural history museums. Forcing the spectator to look up, five printed silk fabrics hover gracefully overhead. We see parakeets in full flight in the sky, passing next to a 1960s building, weaving between the leaves of a plane tree, and dashing through gray or nocturnal landscapes with their luminous feathers appearing, like a flash of lightning or supernatural apparition. These shots, where the birds show up slightly blurry, always too quick to be captured, are accompanied by superimposed phrases that also seem to be captured in flight: “these species are capable of speaking French”, “this is not their environment” or “what does invasive mean?”

Through the settling down of this foreign bird into the environs of Greater Paris, Rebecca Topakian reappropriates the pejorative terminologies associated with the migration of human and living beings, projecting them up in the air, where birds live, without any borders. –M