I’d recently read about a new book coming out from a Hong Kong based artist and (sort of) photojournalist named Michael Wolf. The book was shot in about a month’s time and in none other than the city I grew up nearby. Entitled “The Transparent City”, this stack of paper is probably the best recent addition to my flimsy photography book collection. By using telephoto lenses he creates graphic cross-sections of the skyscrapers in Chicago that really need to be looked at time and time again to get a good taste. An essay at the end of the book attributes a project like this working better in Chicago than New York or Tokyo to Chicago’s apparently haphazard city planning. I always knew the layout there made no sense, but at least it’s conducive to photographing a beautiful and interesting study on architecture, urban culture, and the oft-resulting isolation or banal lifestyle than can accompany it. Once I finished I found myself more and more wanting to occupy my own little window in one of his many photographs ….