Originally from Wichita, Kansas, Darris Lee Harris made his way to Chicago via Columbia College. Graduating in 1994, Darris began a 25 year landscape photography career, capturing Chicago’s buildings, trees, and lakefront. Chicago remains Darris’ home, in the Rogers Park neighborhood.
Chicago is world famous for it’s architecture, and the buildings Darris photographs range from new skyscrapers, to abandoned power stations, to cityscape vistas. Often the goal is to use Chicago as a medium to express visual compositions. The best images can have a two dimensional movement operating over a three dimensional implied depth.
The trees and lakefront photography provide a relief to the dominant. Straight lines comprise much of architecture, so the trees offer opportunities to explore curved lines, using simpler compositions. Most of the trees are from Chicago public parks and Cook County forest preserves. And the lakefront remains exotic even after 25 years of living in Chicago. It’s like an ocean, and unlike anything experienced in Kansas childhood.
Darris Lee Harris’ work is personal in that he creates it for himself. But knowing there’s a relationship, Darris’ goal for the art lover is that they enjoy the work for it’s visual compositions, tones & colors, and the idea that the views actually exist somewhere (or used to exist; cities constantly change). Every day, everywhere, something is beautiful enough to be photogenic. The way architecture interacts with infrastructure is among those beautiful things. Enjoy the view!