A graduate student at the Institute of Design, Ray Metzker executed an ambitious graduate thesis in 1959. Entitled My Camera and I in the Loop, the project comprised 119 photographs taken within the area bounded by the elevated transit line (the El) that encircles the downtown core of Chicago. By confining himself to a defined geographic area, Metzker used the city to study the properties of photography itself. As he wrote of the project, “Ostensibly the Loop imparts hugeness, but it is more than just that. It seems to be the pendant of an intricate web; it is unique and it is magnetic.”
