YOUR BLUES - Michael Schmelling

YOUR BLUES by Michael Schmelling / essay by Tim Kinsella Co-published by The Ice Plant and Skinnerboox. 168 pages / 203 x 277 mm / paperback + screenprinted jacket 200 photographs ISBN 978-88-94895-14-8 Edition of 800 OCTOBER 2018 In 2013, the Museum of Contemporary Photography commissioned American photographer Michael Schmelling to make a new series of photographs about music in his hometown of Chicago. First shown as the solo exhibition Your Blues in 2014 (curated by Karen Irvine), this ambitious body of work now takes form of an artist book, co-published by The Ice Plant and Skinnerboox. Schmelling spent eighteen months immersed in the project, crisscrossing Chicago alone at night, making his way into basement shows, crowded clubs, parties, and recording studios (“waiting in the dark for a communal experience with strangers,” as he describes it), documenting both the communal culture at large — musicians and fans alike — and the DIY individualism of the characters involved. Focussi