The Transparent City

© geoff manaugh, from the essay "transparent city."When Michael Wolf and I first sat down to discuss the images contained in this book, Wolf pointed out one shot in particular. Like the photographer in Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic film Blow Up, Wolf had found himself working late in the studio one night, going over a batch of recent photos from Chicago. The photos were of buildings, of course—very large buildings, with lots of windows, like J. G. Ballard’s high-rise. At some point in the evening, Wolf zoomed in randomly on one of the windows while scanning the image for flaws. But he noticed something: there was a man in the photograph—and he was giving Wolf the finger.Inspired by the find, Wolf went back through every photo he’d taken in the city thus far, methodically scanning, passing from one window to the next, row by row, as if deciphering a hidden text. In that newly committed act of visual interpretation, a key aspect to the project was born: when you look into the lives of others, the lives of ot