To anyone who has lived in Chicago, this image is all too familiar: the crumbling infrastructure under an El underpass. In a weird way, this photo is particularly representative of a lot of things I shoot. Namely, beautiful, symmetrical ruin.

You wouldn’t know it from this image, but it was cold when I shot this. Really cold. I was out location scouting from another shoot south of the East Village neighborhood and walked under this underpass. I was instantly overwhelmed by about three different things: 1) it was at least 20 degrees colder there, 2) it smelled worse than the men’s bathroom at Wrigley Field and 3) there was a full on residence for a homeless person there made up of several large cardboard boxes and other low end, salvaged construction materials.

I paused for a second debating whether I should pass through. In that time, my eyes adjusted to the light and I saw the both vertical and horizontal symmetry of the architecture. I ran back to my car, grabbed my tripod and got this image.