i love this photo, #25

© Dave Jordano

I love this photo by the photographer Dave Jordano. I only recently found Dave's work, and spent a great deal of time pouring over his website. Dave had a long career as a commercial photographer in Chicago, and for the past few years has turned his focus on his fine art work. He has several wonderful projects, including the series Marktown, in which he photographed people and places in a steel mill neighborhood in East Chicago, Indiana.

Of this particular picture, Jordano says, "Lee was a longtime resident of Marktown, having moved there in 1949 and lived in the same house for over 50 years. On my visits there to shoot I would often call on him to say hello. He was a widower and lived alone so my visits would sometimes last a few hours. We would just talk and shoot the bull until it got dark. He lived an extraordinary life, like riding a horse across the United States during the Great Depression looking for work. I didn’t get any work done on those days but I knew I would be back the next weekend so it didn’t matter. What did matter was that I spent some time with him. He had survived 4 heart attacks and was wearing a pacemaker when I met him. The portrait I made of him through his screen door gave his complexion a shallow washed-out look, almost ghost like. He told me he was always thankful that he had lived as long as he had considering his health problems. Last December he passed away."