Elevator Garage, Chicago Possibly 1936 - 1982

John Gutmann made this gelatin silver print of an elevator garage, sometime in the mid-twentieth century, in Chicago. The geometry of this photograph is wild. The cars are stacked and angled, almost like the pages of an accordion, and point upwards towards the sky! It looks like a feat of engineering - a vertical parking solution for a bustling city. I can imagine Gutmann, crouching down to get this dramatic perspective, thinking about geometry, cities, and movement all at once. Maybe he was even thinking about Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase" – all those bodies in motion, chopped up and reassembled. This image shares that kind of fragmented, dynamic energy. The contrast between the dark metal of the elevator and the gleaming chrome of the cars is also really striking. It reminds me of a Dadaist collage, pieced together from scraps of the modern world. In the end, Gutmann created a playful, energetic, and unforgettable image.