Playhouse, Highway, Factory, Trieste, Italy, 2016 ©Jay Wolke

Disparities erupt in Jay Wolke’s photographs, like weeds through the cracks of a utopian vision of progress. He invites us—through his spatially rich photographs—to wander and wonder with him, asking what on earth is happening here? Wolke creates a visual grammar for witnessing startling human adaptations to the impositions of the built environment. There is bemusement and concern in Wolke’s open-ended approach. His photographs are imbued with the sociological, cultural and historical impulses that, often perplexingly, continue to shape the land and our environment.

As Paul D’Amato, co-curator of the recent exhibition at Riverside Arts Center, wrote in the exhibition introduction: “If all we had were Jay Wolke’s photographs in “Building Place: Big Boat Little Pond” as evidence of life on earth, one could be forgiven for thinking what a strange and unknowable species these humans were. Given the evidence of Wolke’s pictures, the viewer is invited to wonder: who were these people capable of such impressive, functionless and mysterious structures all running into one another in a cacophony of design? Were they one people or many who never agreed to a hierarchy of purpose and meaning? Is then what remains the architectural consequence of the Tower of Babel?

 Garry Winogrand once said “there is nothing so mysterious as a fact well described”. In the end, that’s the pleasure that underlies all of Wolke’s pictures. These humans may be odd, but Wolke loves what he sees and makes images that savor every detail. His images run the gamut from playful, disquieting, weird to serenely beautiful. All full of wonder and hard to believe were it not for the irrefutable evidence of the photograph.”

In Wolke’s words: “These photographs explore the disparities between design and consumption; the often-dissonant stratifications of human ambition and adaptation that dominate the built environment. I study intersections of nature, architecture, and habitation, exposing the perpetual re-imaginings, capricious assemblies, ominous entanglements, and repeatedly regrettable consequences of human industry and hubris.”

Houses. Pool. Highway. Piombino, Italy, 2010 ©Jay Wolke

Big Boat Little Boat, Valparaiso, IN, 2020 ©Jay Wolke

Camp Under Bridge, Pittsburgh, 2016 ©Jay Wolke

Quarry Workshop, Carrara, Italy, 2014 ©Jay Wolke

Metro Obelisk, Naples, Italy, 2014 ©Jay Wolke

Fashion Shoot, Sixth Street Bridge, LA, CA, USA, 2024 ©Jay Wolke

Zip Line, Niagrar Falls, ON ©Jay Wolke

Girl on Phone, Beach Shelter, Trieste, Italy, 2016 ©Jay Wolke

Moto Cross, Football, Nova Gorcia, Solvenia ©Jay Wolke

Donkey, Aon, Milan, Italy, 2021 ©Jay Wolke

Concrete Boat, Maestra, Italy, 2022 ©Jay Wolke

Sample Walls, Crafton, PA, 2020 ©Jay Wolke

Indoor Graves Yarkon, Petah, Tikva, Israel, 2022 ©Jay Wolke

Wall of Hope, Anzac, Alberta, Canada, 2013 ©Jay Wolke

Jay Wolke is an artist and educator living in Chicago Illinois. His photographic monographs include All Around the House: Photographs of American-Jewish Communal Life, 1998; Along the Divide: Photographs of the Dan Ryan Expressway, 2004; Architecture of Resignation: Photographs from the Mezzogiorno, 2011 and Same Dream Another Time, 2017. His works have been exhibited internationally and are in the permanent print collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York MOMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, and San Francisco MOMA, among others. His photographs have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, Guardian Magazine, Financial Times Magazine, Geo France, Exposure, Newsweek, Fortune, and the Village Voice. He is currently a Professor of Photography at Columbia College Chicago, where he was Chair of the Art and Design Department from 2000-2005 and again from 2008-2013.

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