MoCP - Darkroom 2023

Paul D’Amato (United States, b. 1956) Hortencia & Leonardo, Chicago, 2019 

This image is part of Paul D’Amato’s Midway series, which depicts the residential area and people who live around Chicago’s Midway Airport. His images in this series feature portraits of diverse communities of people and immigrant communities who live around Midway, as well as views of their homes and the surrounding built environment. D’Amato meditates on the word “midway” as symbolic of this place, which he sees as straddling the line between urban and suburban, as well as the psychological space of many residents who exist between one’s home country and, as he states: “The corners of American life, [where] everywhere is now looking more like everywhere else.”

Paul D'Amato’s photographs have earned him numerous prestigious awards, including a grant from the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; and the Art Institute of Chicago, among many others. He is an associate professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago.

https://pauldamato.com/