Art in America
March 22- June 14, 2001
City Gallery in the Historic Water Tower

No Ketchup
Photographs by Patty Carroll
by Claire Wolf Krantz

Patty Carroll’s 30 stunning photographs depicting grungy Chicagoland hot dog stands were appropriately exhibited in the city’s landmark Water Tower. Now containing a gallery sponsored by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, this bizarre beige limestone Castellated Gothic Style building on Michigan Avenue's glitzy "Magnificent Mile" exemplifies those contradictions emblematic of Chicago that Carroll has captured in her cibachrome prints dating from 1987-1992. These typical Chicago-style hot dog stands are particularly expressive of Carroll's longstanding interest in vernacular architecture and low brow culture, her wider aesthetic interests, and her humorous and quirky, yet technically exacting approach to photography.

The show's title, No Ketchup, refers to a Chicago predilection for hot dogs topped with all sorts of condiments but sans ketchup. Carroll focuses on this city’s ubiquitous hot dog stands, contextualized by their surroundings, with their hand-made signs, menus, and the people of all classes who frequent them – they are echt Chicago: gritty, down-to-earth, glitzy, contradictory. (Dogs and fries taste so much better from a stand than from your freezer!)  People are either absent or incidental in these photos – the specific look of each place constitutes its imaginary inhabitants.

Counterpointing the vernacular subject matter, Carroll’s pictures have strong formal and aesthetic dimensions reflecting her prior training as a graphic designer. Additionally, Walker Evans’ influence is evident in her everyday themes as well as in her compositions: Some photos feature the massing of primary colors; others emphasize arrangements or contrasts of scale, line, mass, and texture. Jake's (1987), is a frontal shot of a stand’s exterior, flattening it into two horizontal bands separated by an awning whose dimensionality is compressed into vertical red and white stripes.The top is a painted commercial sign of a hot dog with all the trimmings – it reads as a uniformly flat surface painted in bright colors. In contrast, the bottom is a variegated surface - its reflective glass window covered with a jumble of randomly arranged menus and funny advertisements, hand painted in divers styles and colors, resulting in an appearance of vibrating, all-over texture.

Stripes are also prominent in Duks (1987), a particularly interesting photo in which a large yellow sign contrasts with the flat, vertical striping of a white stockade fence and the diagonal stripes of picnic tables and benches.

Carroll's distinctive night shots, taken with a tripod using only available artificial light, are particularly apropos of her subjects' garish lighting and neon signs. The Doggery (1987), night lit and glowing a greenish yellow, highlights indoor jukeboxes viewed from the outside. This photo also exemplifies Carroll's complex juxtapositions of buildings, images, and signs: the shack stands under a billboard of a sultry model wearing a fur coat; behind it looms a steel-and-glass international style office building whose horizontal shafts of lighted windows is punctuated by patterns of fluorescent lights.

Carroll often includes funny or ironic signs as part of her compositions. For instance, "Pig Outs" (1987) depicts a stand sporting a giant anthropomorphic hot dog whose exaggerated shape suggests a lively cartoonlike body with a painted a face and projecting sticklike arms and legs.
It also exemplifies Carroll’s tendency to compress layers of information -- in this case, the stand’s boarded-up broken glass is an indicator of the danger and economic makeup of certain neighborhoods. Other signs advertising taco dogs and tamales along with hot dogs and fries reference Chicago's many Latin American communities.

Carroll’s subtext of Chicago's complex diversity is seductively revealed with all its color, authenticity, and flavor. Instead of manipulating her photographs, Carroll searches for places that will - by means of careful framing and lighting - embody her themes. Her sensitive and dense pictures extend her ongoing examination of American vernacular architecture, but these photos are also about the people who create its culture.

Claire Wolf Krantz is an artist, freelance critic, and guest curator.
As an artist she works in a combination of painting and photography as well as digitally created images.