Artist Talk: Bob Thall

Free

Location: Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel, 163 East Walton Place

Bob Thall is best known for his photographs of the Chicago landscape. But in the last ten years, he has been photographing a large number of American cities, focusing on the downtown areas of cities that are rarely examined closely. He is especially interested in cities that have experienced disinvestment, a decline in population, and/or problematic urban renewal.  Bob will present photographs from this ongoing project, Some American Cities, including many photographs not yet published or exhibited.

A native Chicagoan, long-term professor of photography (1978-2017), and former chair of the Columbia College Chicago Photography Department (1999-2011), Thall is known for his comprehensive depictions of the ever-changing city of Chicago. Using a view camera, he creates formally rigorous and deadpan portrayals of the city’s urban and suburban landscape, treating the sprawling northern suburbs and compact alleys all with the same level of carefulness. His work was supported by a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1998, published in four monographs, and exhibited widely, including one-person exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago