David Kogan
The empty urban landscape inspires my photography. Just before sunrise, on Sunday Morning, Chicago is desolate, deserted, and peaceful. For a brief moment, you are all alone. The light is unique. The sounds are different. While the city sleeps, its stark, sometimes gritty beauty is revealed. The images in this collection represent 35 Years of Sunday Mornings. 1985 until the present time. 12 unique Sunday Mornings, 35 years apart. Photography has been my career and has shaped my identity. I […]
The empty urban landscape inspires my photography.
Just before sunrise, on Sunday Morning, Chicago is desolate, deserted, and peaceful. For a brief moment, you are all alone. The light is unique. The sounds are different. While the city sleeps, its stark, sometimes gritty beauty is revealed.
The images in this collection represent 35 Years of Sunday Mornings. 1985 until the present time. 12 unique Sunday Mornings, 35 years apart.
Photography has been my career and has shaped my identity. I see the world through the lens of a camera. I started my career in commercial photography as a photographic assistant at Promotional Arts Studio in Chicago. After spending a year there, I suffered from what I called “swatch fever”, acquired from spending all day photographing fabric swatches for Sears. Coming to the conclusion
that this environment and I were not meant for each other, I left my job and Chicago to travel and explore other alternatives. When I returned, I decided to freelance as a photo assistant. Specializing in advertising and location photography, I opened my own studio in 1976. Over the
years, I have worked for many of the major advertising agencies and corporations. With the arrival of the digital world I integrated art direction, graphic design and print production into my business. I have photographed people from various professions, from bank presidents to chicken farmers, from heart surgeons to pizza chefs, and from singers like Isaac Bashevis and author Studs Turkel
to working men and women.
I now spend my time photographing what fascinates me most, the empty urban landscape. I have spent years chronicling early mornings in every part of Chicago. If you are out early on a winter morning and see someone hunched over a camera, dressed for Arctic weather, that is probably me. No matter where my travels take me, you will find me out searching for what the early morning
reveals. Though as fate would have it, I still photograph a swatch every now and then.
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