El Platform

Nathan Lerner pointed his camera through the metal construction of Chicago’s elevated “El” train tracks, stamping its geometry onto the street below. The long exposure from this unexpected vantage point blurs the three pedestrians visible through the openings of the metal fence. The result is a stylized composition that compresses depth into a single plane. This photograph reflects Lerner’s facility with the Bauhaus aesthetic popularized by László Moholy-Nagy and his European colleagues in the 1920s. Before Moholy’s arrival in Chicago in 1937, photographers like Lerner were already using the city’s architecture as a prompt for visual experimentation.