View North from Robert Taylor Homes

Text and Photograph by Jay Wolke

The shot was of a five block long pile of tires. Between the Robert Taylor Homes and the Dan Ryan, it stretched from Root to 44th. A few trails of inky smoke marked the aborted attempts to extinguish the seemingly permanent fire that smoldered within. It looked more like a huge animal stranded in tar. The random mass of round rubber reflected nothing but black. Just getting it in the frame forced me two blocks away, yet I still had to make the expressway prominent in the shot.

The solution was from above, out some window 6-8 stories up in the Projects. I knew where but not how. (A 4x5 is not trivial and very hard to run with.) I needed a guide, a protector, a host to assist and facilitate. The last time I tried to shoot around here, I was surrounded by kind men>who gently explained to me the way back from where I came. I hadn't been back since.

The only way to be safe AND successful was to make a connection out in the open, where there would be sunlight and many witnesses. The basketball courts. I would never come to a shot like this with shooting as my first goal. This was scouting. I didn't want to be impatient or pushy. I left the camera in the car.

The courts were obviously the center of day-life. They served probably four of the projects' twenty high rises. There were maybe a hundred guys hanging around, rotating in and out of the eight games going on simultaneously. I strolled in from the parking lot and hung back on the margins. Instead of confrontation, everyone seemed to divert their gaze and ignore my presence. I was distinctly aware of my whiteness, and it was rather obvious that I wasn't there to play ball. This was a place where I was definitely the "other". Finally, after about ten minutes, I turned to my neighbor and softly said, "I'll pay a few bucks to someone who'll help me shoot a picture." He stared straight ahead acting deaf and mute. As if on cue he, ran to the nearest game and began his play. After that, it seemed no one would come near me. I still stayed my ground and stood there silent, watching.

Another ten minutes passed. I was lost in the games in front of me, and hadn't approached anyone else except the first guy. From behind, someone pulled at my arm. Shocked from my stupor, I turned and looked down to meet the eyes of a young teenager. "I hear you need some help?" "Yea, I need to get into an apartment up in that building. I want to shoot a photograph out the window." "How much you paying?" "Ten dollars". "Come with me".

We left the courts behind and walked toward the red brick high-rise. I had my guide, but I wasn't sure where he'd guide me to. I told him I needed him to get me in to the building and act as a go-between. "I live a couple of buildings over, but I know everybody here", he said. He knew my vulnerability and instinctively began his task as escort. His name was Andre and he was proud to have the upper hand, knowing that here, with me, he was in charge.

As we entered the building, the brilliant sunlight was extinguished by the narrow doorway. Gang signs and graffiti covered the "lobby". The green cinderblock hallway was stained with decades of habitation and smelled of piss and beer. "The elevator's broke. Let's take the stairs" I followed Andre through the stairwell door and looked up into a dark spiral of uncertainty. Many floors above, a light tried to illuminate the stairs below. I entered with great caution. The stairwell was in worse condition than the lobby, its narrow, vertical space strewn with trash. Occasionally a person would be sitting on a landing as we rushed up. Suspicious looks or agitated shouts hailed us, but we fled upward before any confrontation could be realized. I yelled to stop at the sixth floor.

When we entered the hallway on six I thought I knew exactly which apartment we needed to approach. The trouble was I had lost my bearings. "Knock on that one", I said, hoping that was the NE corner. No one answered. I was actually relieved. My heart was pumping from the climb and I wasn't sure how I would approach the person on the other side of the door. I hadn't thought that far ahead. The same result happened on seven and I was thinking how this was nuts and how much I didn't want to get stuck up here alone. "Don't worry", said Andre, "we'll find someone on eight." It had to be on eight, because we were getting too high for the shot, I said.

By the eighth floor I was ahead and knocked on the door myself. A woman cracked the door and peered at me suspiciously. "Excuse me, do you think it would be possible to take a picture looking out from one of your windows?" "Take a picture?", she said. "You mean you don't want to take my furniture? You don't want to take my kids?" "No, just a picture." "Where's your camera?" "Well, today I just want to see if the picture's there. Just to see if it's a picture at all." She looked at me like I was crazy, but seemed to be so relieved that I had no hostile intensions that she let me in.

It was the first time I had ever been in an apartment in the projects and I was surprised that the walls inside were made from the same cinderblock as the exterior of the building. The front room was spare. A couple of pieces of furniture, and old couch, a chair. I remember seeing a mouse still trapped and lying in the corner, but otherwise the place was tidy and clean. There was nothing on the walls at all. I guess trying to pound a nail into the brick discouraged home decorating. While at first suspicious of me, the woman warmed up very quickly and we began to chat about my project and her life. I told her that if she let me take the photo, I would take pictures of her family and give them to her. This made her happy. She seemed to accept me and believe me, and showed me to the bedroom where I would get the "view".

Looking out the window, a bleak landscape spread out ahead of me. Yes, the tires were just below. The pile looked smaller from up here, but beyond I could see the Ryan splitting the city, and beyond that Sox Park and other landmarks of the south and west sides poking their heads above the hazy horizon. It wasn't a great shot, but would serve the project well.

I thanked the woman and told her I would be in touch through Andre, who meanwhile had made himself at home. "Come on, we're done for today", I said. We left the apartment and scrambled back down the stairwell and out the front door even faster than we had come in the first place. Out in the sun again, I realized I was covered in sweat. The building had been hotter than outside and the air and light were a relief. Andre gave me his telephone number so I could contact him when the time and light were right. I'd try to give him a day's notice, but I was unsure whether this kid could be trusted. Since I was still walking and talking, I figured he was alright. He asked me for the ten bucks, but I gave him five and said he'd get ten more after the shot was taken. He liked that.

Almost a month passed before I could get a hold of Andre. I left messages with various people at his number and just hoped we would connect someday. I just wanted to get the picture before the end of summer.

The day was similar to the first. Hot, hazy, white, gray. Andre and I again met outside the building and again made our way up the stairwell, the elevator still sitting useless and broken. When we knocked on the apartment door the woman answered, her well-dressed children sat silently in the living room. After familiarities, I organized the group for a few 4x5" Poloroids. "Good-looking family", I said. I also made one of Andre, although I assured him this was not his payment.

Finally, I walked into the bedroom to make my own shot. For the first time, I actually looked at the room from which I would be shooting. This time I saw the pale yellow cinderblock walls, the tattered red curtain, and the black babydolls on the narrow bed by the window. Finally, this landscape had become a portrait; the lives that witnessed an endless sea of urban grey, represented by a weary interior, the city of unreachable proportions far below and out of reach. The sky looked like bleached porcelain, the tires like the sleeping giant of my first sighting.

I made about eight exposures. A few including the interior, a few more of the view alone. As I packed up, Andre began to negotiate his fee, claiming that each exposure should count as an individual picture. I owed him $80. I explained that all the exposures were actually needed to get one. We argued the price on the way down the stairs. I didn't want to protest his claim too much. (At least till we were outside) Finally we reached my car. I gave him a twenty dollar bill which seemed to satisfy him. Still he was restless.

As I turned to leave, Andre calmly said,"You know, you're the first white man I've ever really talked to...outside of prison." It suddenly struck me how isolated he was. Within plain sight of this city's wealth and vigor were generations that were denied any access at all. Marginalized and vilified, these were folks trying to get by with the little means they had. No family gift to start a future. No connections to power. No forty acres and a mule. "Please, get me out of here. I want a life outside". I said I would try to find him some help and reached into my pocket to give him my last five.

I walked away with the guilt of a white man trying to understand these different worlds, knowing our paths would not cross again.



Jay Wolke, 1999