2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial: anonymous histories
In Anonymous Histories, Iwan Baan explores Chicago as a living organism—its architecture, infrastructure, and urban condition captured through a contemporary photographic lens. Influenced by Alvin Boyarsky’s 1970s essay Chicago à la Carte: The City as an Energy System, Baan retraces Boyarsky’s vision of the city through its postcards—visual artifacts that reveal not just topography, but cultural values, tourism, and civic identity.
Boyarsky’s concept of the city as an interconnected organism, shaped by communication, industry, and technology, informs Baan’s own journey through Chicago’s layered history. Revisiting sites of industrial achievement—grain elevators, bridges, canals, airports—Baan captures a hidden narrative of change, ambition, and regional pride.
The work is a reflection on spectatorship, memory, and urban mythmaking—using imagery both past and present to reimagine the city’s evolving identity.
With special thanks to:
Sarah Herda, Irene Sunwoo, Matthew Messner, Jessica Collins
Additional research from Igor Marjanović’s Postcards and the Making of Architectural History
