Chicago photographer's new book gives peek inside of over 100 artists creative spaces
CHICAGO (CBS) – Mark Ballogg's home is full of art, mainly locally crafted. Each piece is meticulously displayed with the collection, almost mimicking a museum or an art gallery.
"I have a relationship with Chicago artists, and I try to collect a lot of Chicago art, and I especially like collecting people that are not fully at their peak exposure," he said.
Ballogg is an artist, too, though it's not a title he's always been comfortable bearing through his 40-year career.
"I've always struggled with this idea that photography is an art form, and I always felt like we're kind of second-class citizens, you know, it's not it's not as precious as a drawing or a painting," he said.
As a commercial architecture photographer, he spent most of his career photographing other people's work.
"Now I'm at a point where I'm semi-retired, and my focus has shifted to my own personal work," Ballogg said. "So, I'll be 73 in April, so now, now is my renaissance."
The most recent act in his renaissance is his latest project - a photobook fit for a coffee table documenting the words and studios of the city's artists - aptly named "Making Space."
"Interestingly enough, in the end, I realized that I was in the process of making a space for my own practice."
Ballogg spent six years photographing and interviewing over 160 Chicago artists in some of their most private spaces. Sometimes in their homes, always in their studios, and often, the two overlap regardless.
For painter Tim Anderson and his cats – George and Frankie - their home and studio space are the same.
"A lot of artists have never had people come to their studio for any reason except their friends, you know, and it's so cool to see some of these studios. I mean, it lends credence to your mess," Anderson said.
"And then he, he did it the way he wanted to do it, with no superfluous stuff from publishers, and it's just brilliant. His premise of not necessarily the artist."
Phyllis Bramson's studio also made it into the final edit, and like many artists in the book, her first in-person introduction to Ballogg was when he came over with his camera.
"It wasn't really about my work. It was about the space and how it looks," said Bramson. "I just. I just trusted him, you know, I felt that he was ... I hadn't met him before, but I just felt that it was a valid endeavor."
He may have ended up with 166 artists in the final copy, but he reached out to over 500.
"My initial goal was to expose everyone to the Chicago artist community and its diversity, and I wanted to try to represent everyone," Ballogg said.
"I think it's really important to expose people to that. There's kind of a myth, I think, around artists. They're damaged, or they're unusual. They're unique, and we're all artists."
Each artist in the book was included to show a different facet of Chicago, not just within the art scene but across the city.