rebellebookclub-blog

[rebellebookclub-blog]

[rebellebookclub-blog]

[rebellebookclub-blog]

[rebellebookclub-blog]

Drawn at first to the abandoned architecture of what was once the largest housing project in the world, Jack Bridges soon decided that what really merited documentation was the community still living in those few remaining structures not yet demolished. Since that point in 2002, he’s been working on The Robert Taylor Project, getting to know the residents of this South Side Chicago public housing project and making portraits that connect the people with the place. The sepia-toned gelatin-silver prints in this portfolio suggest the same warmth as their tint, by no means a nostalgia for the inner-city environment, but rather a respect for the humanity of its denizens. It’s not that these pictures forget about the issues of drugs and guns and poverty attendant to the Robert Taylor housing, but they do, importantly, remember that there are other issues as well.

“I hope people will look at the images and try to put themselves at Robert Taylor for just a moment,” says Bridges, who also has completed a series of photographs on the East Side of Detroit and another series of Northern Ireland’s paramilitary murals.

After continued visits to the housing project, Bridges says the Taylor Homes residents welcomed him. They fixed him meals, introduced him to their neighbors and asked him to take their family portraits. The show includes not only images of Taylor residents but also the vacant CHA structures as they were cleared out and demolished.

Jack Bridges was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He holds a BA in history from Colgate University, Hamilton, New York (2000) and an MSJ from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois (2002). In 2005, photographs from The Robert Taylor Project were published in Fader magazine and City Journal, and solo exhibitions of the series were held at Northwestern University and at Filtro in Miami. He has also made a short film, Inside Robert Taylor, on the same subject. Bridges’s previous work includes a series on the East Side of Detroit, and a series on paramilitary murals across Northern Ireland.