Occidens: Facing West

Chicago's second tallest skyscraper leaning into the light and its westward orientation along the Chicago River. Titled Occidens, Latin for "west," it is what it is.

Chicago was the hinge. It was the place where the East ran out and the West began, where the railroad met the prairie and the continent's westward push had its staging ground before the next push. The city was built on that motion — on the energy of people and capital moving always in one direction. To stand at the river and look up at a tower facing west is to feel that current still.

America has always organized itself around the horizon in front. The east is where you came from; the west is where you are going. Occidens is not a lament for what is left behind. It is the last acknowledgment of it — the fading eastern light on the back of something still moving.

Provenance: Leica M11 • Voigtlander 15mm