FIERY, COLORBLIND PHOTOGRAPHER EDGAR ORTIZ: CHICAGO NEO-NOIR

Tim Adams' Guardian article provides us with a good overview of Edgar Ortiz's Instagram account, where more than 400 images have been housed over the past two years.

What adds interest (and a tinge of paradox) is the fact that Ortiz is colorblind. 

His fiery images, many of which recycle motifs of lone figures crossing Chicago streets with various, sweeping background vistas, are thus working against his own visual limits. 

Only occasionally does he post a black and white image, but when he does, they are quite striking.

We are posting five of Ortiz's Instagram images from his account "Iamease" (if you have an Instagram account, type that into the application's search engine and you should be able to access his page).

The image that the Guardian selected to feature is one of Ortiz's best--we won't spoil it for you here. 

Be sure to click through in order to discover more about Ortiz's background (he is also a musician, and he is a late-blooming photographer.

As technology allows the movie-watcher greater ability to create still images, we see a stronger connection between the dynamic images in film and the "stop motion in frame" of photography.

As you scroll through Ortiz's images at Instagram, you can see a progression in his work.

Compositional angles become more diagonal and complex...

The same light source illuminates two different but connected image elements...

And he finds new ways to add texture to his images that stem from real-life light sources that take advantage of the weather conditions that are in play when he snaps his picture.

Just how "noir" these photos actually are in the context of "stark imagery" (particularly the high-contrast black & white images handed down to us from the classic "New York school" of street photographers) is open to question.

But it's clear that Ortiz is fascinated by pools of light and the shadows that surround them, and his work is more and more focused on the subtle, varied (and sometimes random) interplay of these elements.

And (below) there are some unusual, offbeat images that show that he has a well-developed sense of humor...

As Adams says, there is a tension in Ortiz's vision of urbanism: in his Guardian piece, he frames this as "one part Mean Streets, one part Yellow Brick Road." 

You are encouraged to follow Ortiz at Instagram, where street photography is one of the main attractions in a world often overrun by self-promotion. Edgar's world is all about what he sees, not how he presents himself to us. He deserves your attention...