Life through the lens
Photographer Paul D’Amato documents life on the West Side in a new DePaul Art Museum exhibit
Just as the truth is spoken in jest, the way we sit for the camera both reveals and conceals. It’s indicative of how we really appear and how we wish to appear. And when you add to that what we as viewers bring to the photo — seeing it through our own lenses of what we know or think we know about that person and the factors that shape that life — looking at a portrait becomes a complex interaction.
This truth seems inescapable when encountering “We Shall: Photographs by Paul D’Amato,” which opened at the DePaul Art Museum Sept. 12. Nearly a decade ago, D’Amato took his camera to the Chicago’s West Side, where he began photographing residents and the place they call home. For him, every encounter is a two-way street. Because he uses a large camera and tripod, making these images takes more than a few minutes of an individual’s time. “I want the picture to suggest that the subject is looking back at the viewer with the same degree of scrutiny that I looked at them,” he says. “This is why I use a view camera, because it ’s clear that every picture was made with my subject’s cooperation, that they had as much to do with how they’re represented as I do.”
“Paul’s sense of light and color is amazing — it’s like you’re looking at portraits by Vermeer or Goya,” says DePaul’s Assistant Curator Greg Harris. “Beyond the aesthetics, I think Paul is touching on some important social issues. The West Side communities are more or less ignored by the rest of the city these days, unless there’s a negative and sensationalized story to tell. I think Paul is committed to really paying attention and creating photographs that privilege the integrity and character of the people he works with.”
While D’Amato’s motive is more artistic than documentary, a creative act rather than social activism, he allows that these images can be more than pretty pictures. “I don’t trust that a photograph is capable of truly expressing the social dynamics, the economics of the West Side. But paying attention still matters, and if a picture can move someone by the poetry of its form and the quality of the subject’s performance, then that’s something. Not everything, but still something.”