The photos in this book were taken on Chicago’s Northside and in the surrounding areas during 2020 - 2023.

Allen Wheatcroft's images have been about the study of people through a street photography aesthetic and orientation. In this new body of work presented as companion books, The Northside and Björkevägen (Birch Road), Wheatcroft is still exploring people and their influences and idiosyncrasies, but now through a study of place and environment.

In his new work, the photographer turns his attention to structures and spaces in two settings, the city of Chicago and rural Sweden, and how these places are shaped by human presence, relations, and impact. The work also defines "home"; conflicting emotions about home fill Wheatcroft’s photographs of Chicago and Sweden. About the dual project, the photographer says that he is "drawn to barriers and feelings of separation and loneliness fostered by how we shape our landscapes."

In his seminal book on photography, Ways of Seeing, art critic and writer John Berger noted, “We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.”

This view speaks to the images in The Northside and, more broadly, to Wheatcroft's outlook on his recent work. By documenting both the north of Chicago, and the Swedish countryside in a related effort, and presenting the books as two nested parts of a single project, Wheatcroft invites the viewer to reflect on the relationship between two distant geographic spaces as well as their shared humanistic aspects.

The Northside

The images in The Northside were taken on Chicago’s Northside, and beyond, in an attempt to find, or create "order" through the photographs. Wheatcroft says he was fascinated by "... the order that emerges from daily life in ordinary living areas, the order to be found in the tumble of sheds and storefronts, houses, repair shops, fences and alleyways, intersections and parking lots that spill out across the plain that extends to the north of Chicago, in the chaotic suburban-industrial-commercial sprawl of the city’s northside."

The resulting photographs utilize color and composition to inform the narrative aspect of the objects, architecture, and landscape elements present. The viewer is symbolically walking alongside Wheatcroft as he scrounges through the city’s jumble, observing, watching, and blurring the lines between the literal and suggestive.

The photos in this book were taken on Chicago’s Northside and in the surrounding areas during 2020 - 2023.

Allen Wheatcroft's images have been about the study of people through a street photography aesthetic and orientation. In this new body of work presented as companion books, The Northside and Björkevägen (Birch Road), Wheatcroft is still exploring people and their influences and idiosyncrasies, but now through a study of place and environment.

In his new work, the photographer turns his attention to structures and spaces in two settings, the city of Chicago and rural Sweden, and how these places are shaped by human presence, relations, and impact. The work also defines "home"; conflicting emotions about home fill Wheatcroft’s photographs of Chicago and Sweden. About the dual project, the photographer says that he is "drawn to barriers and feelings of separation and loneliness fostered by how we shape our landscapes."

In his seminal book on photography, Ways of Seeing, art critic and writer John Berger noted, “We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.”

This view speaks to the images in The Northside and, more broadly, to Wheatcroft's outlook on his recent work. By documenting both the north of Chicago, and the Swedish countryside in a related effort, and presenting the books as two nested parts of a single project, Wheatcroft invites the viewer to reflect on the relationship between two distant geographic spaces as well as their shared humanistic aspects.

The Northside

The images in The Northside were taken on Chicago’s Northside, and beyond, in an attempt to find, or create "order" through the photographs. Wheatcroft says he was fascinated by "... the order that emerges from daily life in ordinary living areas, the order to be found in the tumble of sheds and storefronts, houses, repair shops, fences and alleyways, intersections and parking lots that spill out across the plain that extends to the north of Chicago, in the chaotic suburban-industrial-commercial sprawl of the city’s northside."

The resulting photographs utilize color and composition to inform the narrative aspect of the objects, architecture, and landscape elements present. The viewer is symbolically walking alongside Wheatcroft as he scrounges through the city’s jumble, observing, watching, and blurring the lines between the literal and suggestive.