The recent re-opening of the California Blue Line station led me to other thoughts about how much the neighborhood has changed in such a short time. I have only been a Logan Square resident for five years now, and things look markedly different, let alone how they must appear to someone with a longer tenure. Even the little spaces, the nooks and crannies, are in constant states of metamorphosis.
Around this time of year, the Mexican holiday of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a celebration of the life of those that have died. The skulls and skeleton motifs are surrounded with vibrant colors instead of the “usual” gloomy and gothic black. Much like how Easter and the Spring season focuses on life and rebirth, so does this view of celebrating the dead.
In this collection of images, I’ve tried to document different parts of Logan Square as it was before the construction and the change, before the growth and the expansion, before the boom and the bloom. I do this not to romanticize a nostalgia for “the old gritty Logan Square,” but rather just to see it as I saw it then. Death itself is a kind of rebirth and, to borrow from Tom Robbins, Autumn is the springtime of death.
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