Melissa Weimer
Melissa Weimer
Chicago photographer shows the world what elements make up her hometown with 'Lake.Sky.Vans.'
By Maya Henderson
Published: October 5th, 2004 | 12:48pm
Every city has its little idiosyncrasies. Philly has its cheesesteak, New York has the big-city hype. But what about Chicago? Photographer Melissa Weimer, a 24-year-old native Chicagoan, gives it a shot.
In her photo series Lake.Sky.Vans., this School of the Art Institute of Chicago alum lays out her vision of what makes up the Windy City, pinpointing three things, or aesthetics, that she believes give the city its distinctive look and feel: Lake Michigan, the omnipresent sky, and…
Vans? Don’t be confused — yes, vans. But not only vans. Though the project title seems exclusive to vans (they do make up the majority of auto shots, from Astros to Econolines), it also includes any vehicle with character (roughly circa 1975-1988) that’ve been shown some owner and/or city love. Whether with duct-taped windows, Chicago winter salt-encrusted rims, or spraypainted art.
Although she has spent most of her life around vans — as a kid in the family car and then as an owner herself later on — it wasn’t until a few years ago when she was driving Augusta Boulevard from the city’s Ukrainian Village heading to the nearby suburb of Oak Park that she noticed how many vans she saw. And decided to count. Twenty minutes later, she reached her destination and had counted over 30 vans.
She had a few of her over 100 images printed onto postcards, and locals took notice. Soon she found herself being interviewed on the Chicago branch of National Public Radio (NPR), 91.5FM. Here she talks about Lake.Sky.Vans., describes the art of van pursuit, and explains why you’ll probably never see her driving a BMW.
What was your inspiration for Lake.Sky.Vans?
Lake.Sky.Vans is so many different things to me. The short answer is that living in Chicago and looking around and seeing what I see — that’s the inspiration. The concept is a five-part aesthetic. Chicago’s aesthetic is the lake, [the] sky, vans, architecture, and construction — and in that sense it’s pretty straightforward.
But really the inspiration was growing up in Chicago with a dad from Chicago and a mom from Wisconsin and having this like Midwest appeal my whole life. Seeing what it meant to drive vans and to be in Chicago and how people reference the lake as a direction, “You’re going east and that’s the lake,” and seeing those things evolve from childhood and that’s really what inspired it. It really sort of happened by accident, when I looked back at my photos last January and I was like, “Wow I have a lot of pictures of vans.”
So then it became more conscious. But initially it wasn’t a conscious thing, it wasn’t something I thought about and then started doing. It just was there all the time from being here. I couldn’t avoid it; it’s always in your face.
When do you think you first became aware that Chicago had a distinctive style from any other city that you’ve visited?
It happened in college when I started taking trips to other places. I had a good friend who lived in Boston and I started traveling to see him all the time. I’d go there like every weekend and I’d look at the architecture in Boston. It’s so much like Chicago — architecture-wise — but it’s certainly more ornate, a little cleaner, cleaner lines, more hills, narrower streets, not a grid, the water affects it differently. And that was the first city where I was like, “Oh, Boston’s like a sister city to Chicago but there are so many things that are different what are they?”
And then as I traveled to Detroit, then to the south and Florida and eventually to California and I saw how those elements affect different cities. Then I’d go places and people would be like, “You have the strongest Chicago accent I’ve ever heard” and I was like, I do? People started singling me out as [part of Chicago] and that’s sort of how I became aware of it. It was really intoxicating and awakening and it made me just want to travel more and more. I eventually did take a trip around the country and hit pretty much every major city to get a look at what they’re doing.
What was the general response from people when you said you were doing a series that captures the lake, sky, and vans?
People were confused I think. Until you see the images it’s hard to understand. When you talk about and show pictures of the lake and the sky it’s kind of incomprehensible, it’s overwhelming. It’s like Mother Nature in action is pretty powerful. So the picture of the vans…people would go, “Lake — OK, sky — all right,” and then they’re like, “And what’s the last part? Vans?” and I’m like, yeah V-A-N-S, and there like “Hmm…I don’t follow you there.”
Not until they see the pictures can they really follow me there. But once they do the vans are the most magnetic images. People are like, “Oh I had a van like that or, oh that’s my neighbor’s van.” So it’s really that human-interest element that people are responding to, but initially I had to lead them down the path.
How did you make this project a reality?
The first thing was to go back into my photos and to pull out every lake, sky and van [photo] that I wanted to use and that took a long time; that was like going through seven years of photos that I have sort of archived. The next part was going out and sort of filling in what I saw as holes in the project and also the fact that I continued shooting. Then it was to compile the images make them postcards — something that I could give to people and let them see what I was talking about.
You think Chicago’s comprised of five things: lake, sky, vans, construction, and architecture. But what do you think brought you to these things? Like someone might say I see lake, sky, el — or lake, sky, Italian beef…
That’s interesting! I just worked on a film with my friend called Vienna Beef. She had a screening of it in LA and I went to go see it at a film festival — and it was received well but people weren’t able to get it. You gotta come to Chicago to fully understand the Vienna Beef phenomenon. They can be really broad elements. p> You can fit almost anything into those elements, but I didn’t pick them to be broad — I guess that’s what I realized was really affecting my life. I owned a van and lived in Humboldt Park for six of the years I’ve lived in Chicago, you know they’re riddled with vans over there. So the vans came really easily.
Then the lake, using it as a reference point, using it as a summer place. Everyone in Chicago is affected by the lake, either by their access to it or their lack of access, by the fact that when they go there it's usually a special time. It’s not like Central Park in New York where it’s smack dab in the middle of the city, you make it a special destination. It’s like the forever destination in Chicago. It’s like our Rio de Janeiro and we’re here because of the lake. So really everything is based off the idea that it was a port and the water was here and that we built this city on a marsh and that plays on our architecture a lot.
So, that’s where the lake comes in, and then the sky comes to be because I find myself standing in my room just…and the way it has these heavy lead grey clouds that are so low sometimes you feel like, “Am I in Russia? What is this?” But then you have these days with blue skies and huge clouds and I don’t know that everyone is looking up but the grey skies go with the winter here — everyone here knows what that means. So that’s sort of how the sky comes about. As far as construction, we are dealing with it constantly, a nightmare. You can’t get down any major street from like May until October.
Yeah, just when it starts to be nice and you want to be outside in Chicago
And you’re just stuck in this traffic with the sun beating down in your hooptie with no A/C and your radio’s broken and it’s really affecting your life. As far as architecture, we’re like the birthplace of modern architecture and Chicagoans are proud of that and we also have this really neat residential architecture that runs the gamut from 1900 until now. So, that affects us too in a similar way that we’re affected by construction.
What kind of car do you drive? Do you take pride in it? Would you ever considering getting a van and customizing it and if yes, how so?
That’s a great question. I drive a matte black 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. I take immense pride in my car and I’m working on some improvements right now. It is customized, as is any car almost 30 years old. And it keeps coming up; people keep telling me to sell it and I’m not doing it.
As far as vans go, I’ve owned a van — I had a 87 Ford Econoline 150. That was customized; we had a little TV, VCR, and put a fridge in ourselves. I brought it with a friend of mine so we could travel. We had a bed in the back; we had little pimp lights, two kinds in the floor and in the ceiling. We had a CD that we added. Yeah we made it our home for like seven months and checked out the rest of the city. I was living on Rockwell and Augusta when I had it and, parking was a bitch in that van, but I got a lot of love for the van in the neighborhood.
So, we had mad pride for that van and I ended up selling it, which was sad but also really cool because I passed it on. The guy who got it was like, “I just got the best van in the world” and I was like, yeah you did. I would love to buy another van my dream car — and my boyfriend always makes fun of me he’s like, “If you won a BMW in a raffle you’d sell it and buy a van — and I’m like, I totally would. You can’t travel in a Beamer, you got to travel in a van.
It does take a bit of money to customize a car and for a lot of people a van might be the only car they can afford right now which is why they fix it up and get “Chicago” airbrushed on it or whatever. Do you ever feel uncomfortable about being so fascinated with something that a lot of people just find is a day-to-day thing they do?
No, because I’m them. I just feel like because I’m an artist, my job is to take a step back and look at that and talk about that. But I’m not perfect. I’m poor, I had a shitty van and I kept it running. I have a shitty car now and I’m like, man, that windshield’s pretty cracked, it might be time for a new one. And it’s not — like you said — it’s not about customizing it to look cool, it’s about customizing it to keep it utilitarian but also to continue taking pride, and no I’m not guilty about that.
Why do you think vans are so popular here?
It’s just like the beef, like Vienna beef or Italian beef. It’s just big and meaty. Our meals are big and meaty and our cars are big and meaty. That includes Grand Marquis and Caprice Classics… Even people here are fat, people here are big and meaty and the families are big and all of that lends itself to it.
The other thing I don’t think people here in Chicago are flashy or have that need to be. You know, there’s every kind of person here in Chicago but I think that Chicago has like…a van is like low profile pimpin’. You got room, you got a TV and a bed in there but you’re not trying to tell the neighborhood that — you’re just trying to enjoy it and keep it to yourself and a good way to do that is not to flaunt it. And I think that’s part of Chicago. It’s a family town and you’re involved with your family and you’re carrying around a lot of people and that adds to it as well.
In your NPR interview you talk about chasing down a man on the south side to get a picture of his van. Can you name another time that you went to great lengths to take a picture of a van?
Well one thing that I have to always do is stand in the middle of the street. It seems like every great photo happens in the middle of traffic. So, I’ve had many instances of sort of stopping traffic or getting yelled at or sideswiped. Sort of dangerous because as soon as you put the camera up to your face you can’t see anything but what’s in the frame. So it becomes really dangerous.
But besides chasing down that guy almost every van is an adventure in a way because a lot of the neighborhoods the vans are in — and not all — but like neighborhoods I don’t live in…I mean, I’ve spent time in Humboldt Park and I feel really comfortable there. But a lot of time when I’m shooting on the south side, I mean I’m just like…at the end of the day I’m just a white girl. You know what I mean? And I’m just like there and I’m taking photos of peoples homes of cars in their driveways and that’s always an adventure. And I never try and take pictures on the sly. I always try to be really plain about what I’m doing so people can approach me if they want and I always just try to smile and say, hey nice van. So in that sense it’s always an adventure.
Melissa Weimer is currently trying to publish a book of her over 200 images for the project. Visit her website at Melissa Weimer Homepage to view more images; follow the links to listen to the NPR interview
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