Around Town: Ken Ilio's 'Mercury Rising' (Part 1)
By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 1, 2013 5:00PM
Earlier this week I received an email from Ken Ilio, aka "Flipped Out" on the Chicagoist Photos Flickr pool, thanking Chicagoist for featuring his photography over the years. Ilio is moving to Indiana and will no longer be able to submit photos to the pool on a regular basis.
He did, however, clue me in to this beautiful photography project he's been working on for close to a decade, a project called "Mercury Rising" where he's taken photos of Anish Kapoor's "Cloud Gate" sculpture at Millennium Park from the same vantage point, on different days, over the years. The photos show "The Bean's" progress from its construction to current day.
Cloud Gate is one of the most overshot photography subjects in Chicago but, like Harvey Keitel's cigar shop owner in the film Smoke takes a photo of the same street corner at the same time every day for decades, Ilio shines a new light on how to approach street photography; it's all in the details. Today's gallery shows the construction of Cloud Gate from the frame assembly to the buffing of the seams so that it was ready for public viewing.
It's a hell of a sendoff, Ken. Godspeed.
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