Michael Weinstein

Chicago's El never looked so stunning as it does through Keith Hackett's lens, rendered in precise and super-realistic color photographs shot at humble stops that he invests with surprising glory. Saturating his colors to the max, Hackett produces relentlessly straight images that remind us that the tedium that we associate with commuting can be redeemed if we only look at the grandeur of the tracks disappearing into a far horizon bathed in the soft light of dusk or dawn punctuated by flashes of electrical illumination. Basing his compositions on the strict linear geometry of the El's design, Hackett is then free to use the other dimensions of photography--color and light--to infuse his subjects with the power of uncompromising directional motion that we depend on to take us to our appointed destinations, but that we ordinarily overlook.

Keith Hackett's "CTA--Dawn to Dusk" shows at Illinois Institute of Art, 180 North Wabash, (312)280-3500, through March 4.

(2005-02-01)

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