The COMP Magazine Serhii Chrucky - Operating Principles or Programmatic Intent

Locating and analyzing patterns, shifts, and signifiers in our architectural and visual culture through serious contemplation and research is central to the ongoing photographic work of Serhii Chrucky. The COMP magazine caught up last month with Chrucky to discuss his affection for the city’s architectural and photographic history, the Forgotten Chicago project, his penchant for the mundane, and the importance of diversifying approach in his sundry photography investigations.

Serhii Chrucky, St. Teresa & Bee, Chicago, from untitled series, 2015

I see that you hold a deep interest in the architecture, history and photography of Chicago (and beyond). Can we start with a bit of your personal history as this relates to your ongoing investigations?

I was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. My parents and I moved to Chicago in 1999, the summer before I started high school. I was already interested in photography, but being here instilled in me a drive to pursue it seriously. It was like a light switch, one day I made a decision that this is what I’m going to do for a living. Being surrounded by and being able to find like-minded and supportive people was (and continues to be) helpful, and was the complete opposite from the situation I was coming from. As for why I’m interested in the built environment instead of this or that subject, it feels like it’s always been that way. The first picture I ever shot was of a railroad bridge over a river. It’s well composed, and not just for a four year old. Trying to explain this is like trying to explain why you use your feet to walk..

Serhii Chrucky, 106th St. & Calumet River St, Chicago, from Auto Endeavor, 2006

You co-founded the website Forgotten Chicago. The materials address a range of topics with a focus upon place, specifically architecture, and how the city transforms over time. What prompted you to initiate this effort? What did you hope to share with your reader?

I started Forgotten Chicago with Jacob Kaplan. The idea arose out of our mutual interest in the websites Built St. Louis and Forgotten New York. We saw that there wasn’t a similar website for Chicago so we just dove in and did it. It can be summarized, at least from my perspective, as an attempt to read the built environment both historically and symbolically, to look at a building or a certain area and answer questions like “why does this look this way,” or “why are things arranged in this particular way?” We focused on lesser known aspects because it offered the opportunity to do original research where rehashing topics that were already covered did not.

The process of discovery is thrilling. I enjoyed the challenge of finding a seemingly obscure topic that I thought might have some deeper underlying significance, then researching, observing, and synthesizing the material. Asking and finding an answer to a question like “why did the city institute a municipal parking program in the mid-1950s only to dismantle it in the early 1980s?” was very interesting to me. Reporting those results to a live group of people, not so much. I never considered my activity in terms of “sharing with the reader.” I could handle the idea of an invisible, faceless audience, but it became very uncomfortable for me when we started doing walking tours and lectures. I feel that way about my other work too – that the audience is an abstraction. I primarily enjoy the game-like aspect of producing work.

The upshot of Forgotten Chicago is that it opened a lot of doors for those who were involved. Although we have very different career paths, Jacob and I certainly owe where we are now to having started the website.

Serhii Chrucky, Shure, Border with Niles, from City Proper, 2007

In conversation, we’ve discussed the photographs of Bob Thall, Richard Nickel and others. What did you find of interest in these photographers? Are there specific items in their practice that influenced the way you think about and make photographs?

I do not have a passionate dedication to a cause like the one that motivated Richard Nickel. I admire him and think he fully deserves the folk-hero status that he’s accorded, but I’m not sure if I’ve learned much about photography from his work, nor can I stake any claim in being a part of his lineage.

In Bob Thall’s work I found convincing evidence for the idea that the world as it is can still be interesting when it is not fictionalized or editorialized. It has some measure of straightforwardness and honesty that I don’t encounter very often. I don’t think Thall is out to prove a point, or convince me of anything. There’s no sales pitch in his photographs — they’re not asking me to do anything. This is not to claim that Thall’s photographs are any more or less “real” than any others. And a deadpan style is still a style after all. If I’ve learned anything from Thall’s work, it’s that photographs don’t have to be pushy and can avoid spectacle and still be incredibly compelling. Thall describes his work as being “closer to literary nonfiction than to records and documents.” I share this view of my own work verbatim. I can’t phrase it any better.

Serhii Chrucky, Red Courts, from RYB Courthouse, 2014

You’ve produced a wide range of projects – RYB Courthouse, When Are You Going to Start Living?, Airport Estates, etc. Upon my initial viewing of your early works I sensed an affinity with some practices found in the 1975, William Jenkins exhibition, “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape”. However, upon further review I see multiple layers in the imagery addressing elements related to the practice of seeing and recognition, probing formal compositions, and the image as historical metaphor. Beyond being produced by you, what ties all of these works together?

I’ve heard that comparison to New Topographics before. It seems that most any depiction of land made since 1975 that deviates from notions of beauty in terms of the Western landscape canon can be said to be reminiscent of that exhibition. I’m sure Robert Adams would disagree. I certainly don’t see myself repeating that program, although it is a specter that I have to contend with. If I do think about the New Topographics, it is strictly in terms of pushing away from it.

Of that group of photographers, I only feel an affinity with Joe Deal. His images often feel unsettled and slightly wrong, as if the content is squirming within the frame. They’re not neatly packaged, and they make you wrestle with them. Although messy in that way, they are often anchored by some element in the frame. It’s very hard to make quiet disquieting images, and he did that very well.

Every time I’ve tried to come up with some all-encompassing explanation for what ties all my work together, there is always an exception. I keep refuting myself, so I’ve stopped trying and that is a huge relief. There are topics and themes I seem to return to, particularly the social function of images, land politics (and politics in general), kitsch, high/low culture, middle-class aspiration, American exceptionalism, and so on. Some of this is likely inherited from studying under Peter Hales. Using the same approach and/or dealing with the same subjects in a repetitive, production-oriented way would bore me, so I try to find ways to surprise myself. The most satisfying images that I make are the ones that linger in my head for a while like an upsetting dream. When I can’t figure out all the ways they could be meaningful – when I can’t pin them down.

Serhii Chrucky, Spread from When Are You Going to Start Living, 2013

In addition to working as an artist, you teach. I believe your students would describe you as one who expects the student to understand the importance of contemplation, research and a diligent effort. Simply put, you want the student to think. Can you expand upon this and what other types of items you see as instrumental in your role as an educator?

I agree with what you said about the importance of contemplation, research, and effort, but those are so ingrained in me at this point that it is not a strain to try to impart those qualities onto other people. I try not to overthink the mechanism of “teaching” but simply try to focus on individual and group dialogue. If students are invested in their work, it’s easy for me to be curious about their work and their thoughts and engage them. If not, you can’t force people to care.

Anamatronic Merriwether Lewis, St. Louis, from untitled series, 2012

What are you presently working on?

I’m working on freelance architectural photography jobs, a book about public sculpture in Chicagoland, a series of platinum prints, and some commercial videography projects. I’ve got two longer video projects I’m working on with the Forgotten Chicago crew, one is a feature length historical documentary on Harold Washington, and the other is a cinema verite style documentary of a contemporary political figure. I have ideas for two bodies of photography work, one of which I talk about below. The other one is an old idea that will very difficult and time consuming to execute, so I don’t want to make any promises on the record.

Serhii Chrucky, Waste disposal unit, Joliet, from untitled series, 2015

I am curious about **stand alone photographs**. This is a collection of fairly disparate imagery. There are photographs of artificial landscapes and dilapidated interiors, photographs of photographs, and random assemblages of trinkets and rubbish. What piques my interest is the attention to the seemingly unattractive and mundane. Do you have a specific intent for these works or are they merely images that you randomly collect?

I also thought they were disparate until I grouped them together, and then all of a sudden they made sense as a group. I don’t know if this is clear, but “stand-alone photographs” isn’t a title – I wanted to put in one place images that I felt strongly about that were fragments of ideas for other groups of images that didn’t work for whatever reason, or single images that I liked but had nowhere to place. I no longer feel like I have to create a series that has an operating principle or programmatic intent. I’m done with straining for overarching ideas, thinking a set of images has to be “about” something. At this point, I want to produce a group of loosely interrelated images that may evince a number of themes, but aren’t reducible to being “about” a phenomenon or place, or whatever. Nor do I like the idea of a consistent way of seeing re-applied ad nauseum, like Lee Friedlander or Richard Avedon. That said, I do have in my head a list of things in the world to be on the lookout for, some examples include poorly executed landscaping projects, water management structures, miniature golf courses, architectural duplications, outmoded recreational facilities, and aborted construction projects to name a few. That group of images and my list of ideas forms the nucleus of a new cluster of images that I’ll be working on moving forward. I think I have chosen a good title for them, but I’m not entirely certain about it yet. I have to make sure it’s not too overbearing. Titles often seem to get in the way of enjoying the pleasurable ineffable nuggets we’re all really after when we look at art.

If you’re thinking these photos depict mundane things, it’s probably because I consciously steer clear of photographing objects, places, and events that can be construed as spectacular. It certainly wasn’t mundane to make them, quite the opposite. Nothing beats the rush of finding a scenario that makes sense as a photograph, and then it’s even better still to find them interesting after five, fifteen, or however many years.

You also mentioned that they seem random. I only think these images would be construed as random if you’re expecting a consistent systematic approach, and there is no universal imperative dictating that I do so. I still can and do work systematically for certain projects, but obviously not all the time. An intuitive approach is still an approach, which is hardly random.

As far as depicting unattractive things, I don’t particularly want to launch into a discussion on beauty. Not that I think the topic isn’t worthwhile. The reasons informing preferences are so multifaceted that I would at need an essay at minimum to discuss how I think in relation to that galaxy of possibility.