When Chicago Turned The Heat On

By Janhavi Acharekar

The Statesman, 14 November 2004

Everybody loves a good summer, especially when you’ve just emerged from the sub zero temperatures of a merciless winter. And when flailing your arm to hail a cab on icy mornings has been the only form of outdoor activity available for months, you know that summer is going to be a hectic time of year. Chicago more than made up for its winter sloth this summer - the season was a melee of street festivals and cultural activity that included an open photography exhibition at the city’s Millennium Park, art fairs, a gay parade and plenty of other delights. Look closer and you’ll find a little bit of India in each of these street activities.

‘I set off with the idea of creating an optimistic family album of our planet. But this rather simple intention turned into an extraordinary and unique adventure in which I photographed and got to know more than 1000 families from all levels of society, ranging from heads of state to shoe shine ‘boys’, ’ explains a large poster at Wrigley Square, in Chicago’s Millennium Park. The park, now famous for its ‘bean’ sculpture by Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor, served as a vast open-air gallery for Paris-based German photographer Uwe Ommer’s labour of love ‘Family Album of the World’, until quite recently.  The 100 odd images displayed were part of a huge collection shot over a period of four years, from 1996 to 2000, when Ommer traversed 160,000 miles by road and succeeded in making portraits of 1251 families from all over the world. Partly funded by UNICEF, Ommer covered 145 countries on 5 continents in his quest for family portraits from the nooks and crannies of our planet. His pictures are a revival of the posed-for traditional family portrait in a paradoxically candid style, and are also documented in the form of a book by the title 1000 Families (Taschen). Each picture has a story to tell, whether it is the life-story of Sylvie, a midwife from Mandiana, Guinea or a peek into the family life of Barakat, the Syrian painter with family on an old scooter. Closer home, there is the farmer family from Delvada as well as Bekharam, the meteorologist from Jaisalmer, with wife and kids. Interestingly enough, our womenfolk in ghunghat seem the least camera shy of the lot.

The photographs display an optimism that is infectious – it is the optimism of Sylvie whose husband has left her for being unable to produce a child and who has adopted two children, dreaming at the same time of opening a clinic - and the simple optimism reflected in the caption accompanying Bekharam’s family portrait with his prediction of sunshine for the next two months. Blown up next to these images is a large map on which Ommer traces his journey, joking that he set off to lose a lot of weight, see his hair turn white, get married in Las Vegas, encounter highway bandits and robbers, try to get an elephant to smile…. among other things, as he set off to succeed in making 1251 family portraits from across the globe.

A short walk from Ommer’s exhibition is Wrigleyville’s Art Fair. A colourful confusion of stalls that display everything from glass art to emerging talent in fine art, it even has a stall where sitar player Stephan Mikes plays live. Having trained under Roop Verma, Mikes combines his knowledge of Eastern music with the influence of Latin, Middle Eastern, Afro-Cuban and Caribbean rhythms. He has several albums to his credit and has performed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Wang Center for the Performing Arts. But then, there is no dearth of music in Chicago, birthplace of the blues. Jazz festivals abound and even at The Taste of Chicago at Grant Park, possibly the largest food festival in America, you can have your fill of jazz and country music as you dig into your samosa or chole bhature.     

Meanwhile, at the peak of summer, Chicago’s 35th Annual Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade is possibly the most colourful and frenzied street occasions of them all. Colourful beads are distributed among onlookers, rainbow flags wave to beats of music, there are dancing gay doctors, gay police and army parades, lesbians revving Harley Davidsons, mock same-sex weddings, anti Bush sentiments and plenty of corporate sponsorship amid wild cheering in streets lined by 400,000 spectators. Sangat, America’s South Asian Gay and Lesbian organisation is represented by sari and salwar kameez clad Indian and Pakistani hijras gyrating to Asian beats. For the more refined, evenings at Lake Michigan are reserved for Shakespearean drama, ‘Theatre on the Lake’, as well as open-air film screenings as part of Chicago’s summer film fest. There’s also the Printer’s Row Book Fair in Chicago’s historical Printer’s Row District – a free literary event with book readings, book signings by authors and the largest collection of new, used and antiquarian books for sale. 

There’s plenty of indoor art, of course, and if you wish to rest your weary feet someplace close by as winter returns, The Art Institute of Chicago with its large collection of the Impressionists is the best bet.  The Terra Museum of American Art is nearly as impressive while the Field Museum’s special exhibit this summer was a collection of antiquities from China’s Forbidden City. But then, that will be another story.