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Lake Michigan on March 27th, 2020.

What marks time? How do we understand time’s passage? How can we imagine these markings have changed, with technology, with social and cultural changes, with shifts in religions and industries and families and lives. Can the humblest of materials, compost, be another way to understand ourselves in this world? Watching the beginning stages of both a material breaking down and also being born? From compost comes great possibilities and a nurturing that belies it’s sometimes unpleasant reputation.

Lake Michigan on March 26th, 2020.

“Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed.  Quit evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now.” – Epictetus

Lake Michigan on March 25th, 2020, ten minutes watching the sun rising over the water. 

“Our origins are of the earth.. and so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity”

Rachel Carson

Lake Michigan on March 24th, 2020, the wind has finally broken on the lake and birds have returned overhead, urging me on as I filmed this morning. A stillness, a peacefulness set upon me as I stood along the lakes edge. It is always here, its presence a constant, it’s character always in change.

Lake Michigan on March 23rd, 2020.

Lake Michigan on March 22nd, 2020.

Lake Michigan’s waters undulate against the shore’s edge, a part of my daily ritual, this process, standing before the lake, has taken on new meaning in this time. To be able to be here, in this moment, to stop and to listen, is so very important. Please enjoy this five minutes from the shore on March 20th, 2020.

Five minutes from my visit to Lake Michigan this morning. A heavy fog, a shifting blue lake, birds flocking overhead. A time for pause and reflection.

Watching/photographing the sunrise on Lake Michigan this morning-pure life force! You have to make it happen every day!

These are some of my favorite days to spend on Lake Michigan. When the separation from the water and the sky, between water and air, becomes hard to discern. These hazy, muted days, with their palettes of restraint, have a warmth that wraps around you, even on a cold winter day.

In September 2015 I began to photograph Lake Michigan daily for my Lake Series. Four and a half years later my ritual continues, it anchors me to the moment and the grandeur of being alive!

Trees are pruned heavily along the elevated train tracks on the North side of Chicago. These heavily shadowed forms have been of great interest lately. How do these figures take on new meanings as visual information is restricted. What happens when we exclude information, what new stories are told?

A mockup for a new project that has been exploring the surface of the Earth at a different scale and magnitude. Photographs taken from Aspen Colorado to Chicago Illinois, evenly spaced throughout the duration of the flight?

From fellow Bennington alum Mary Ruefle. This book reconnected me to myself. “In her recent work, Ruefle can seem like a supernally well-read person who has grown bored with what smartness looks like, and has grown attracted to the other side…. She is not writing with a prescription, or at least not one for this earth.” ―The New York Times

Ice has broken and refrozen repeatedly before the morning that this photograph was taken on. You can see how smaller pieces of ice, disparate in shape and size, have begun to refreeze back together, following a momentary period of warmth. This is a process you can see all winter along Lake Michigan, with the waters of the lake endlessly creating new forms on its surface.

Lake Michigan pushing water over the lake edge along the eastern edge of Streeterville, here in Chicago downtown. A late February 2020 day, with fog, wind and all the rest.

“When the secret is exposed we look away, when the secret is hidden we try to see it.” Mary Ruefle

Large pieces of ice began to break apart on Lake Michigan and these forms begin to rub and push and break against each other along the shore. Each piece slowly becoming smaller with the passage of time, these ice floes disappear and reappear throughout the winter and spring.

A beautiful photograph shared from a recent project by the Chicago based designers Nelson Collective featuring a photograph of Lake Michigan by Lincoln Schatz.

Pieces of ice have been forming and breaking along the shore of Lake Michigan all winter. These particular shards are so delicate, quickly melting away as they touch human skin.

“Artist Lincoln Schatz thinks about photos beyond framing and composition. On this 1-mile walk around Carnegie Library, he’ll challenge you to reset your creative habits and take photos based on how you feel. The streetscape will serve as a tool to create context and you’ll use iPhone to snap images inspired by your senses. Join us during Week 3 for video sessions during our StoryMakers Festival.”

Learn more about the event here.

Apple Store
801 K Street NW
Washington, DC 20001

Lincoln Schatz has a lifelong relationship with the sea. But as a native Chicagoan, the artist’s concept of a vast body of water is of the inland variety, one of a series of great wells carved by glaciers, filled in with icy fresh-water melt. Defining the city’s Eastern border, Lake Michigan’s lengthy reflection can cast a winter twilight in a glow of cerulean blue, extending over the urban skyline of glass and steel towers and to the Midwestern landscape beyond. Even urbanites ensconced in a frenzied, 21st-century pace, often blithely content to acknowledge the shore as a mere recreational asset or property enhancement, are soothed by the lake’s steadiness, unable to escape its magnetic pull. “Look east and you see the lake, only the lake,” says Schatz. “Turn around and you see Chicago.” Click here to read and see the entire project.

Lincoln Schatz will be conducting an Earth Day photo walk as part of todayatapple at the Michigan Avenue store in Chicago on April 27th, 2019 at 2pm.