Ernest Hemingway’s spirit casts a shadow over Oak Park, Illinois, USA. Along with Frank Lloyd Wright, Hemingway is the town’s most famous citizen. Even those who’ve never read a line of Hemingway’s work, which includes the vast majority of the citizenry (I would guess), are aware of who Hemingway was, what he is famous for, how he lived his life, and how he was from Oak Park. Frank Lloyd Wright is America’s greatest architect, bar none, an architect so great that he fascinates people who don’t care about other architects, like yours truly. Hemingway is an author who can be set on the shelf beside Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe. Indeed, if one had to pick the top three most famous American writers of all time worldwide, Hemingway is in the running for third place along with Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, and perhaps a few other candidates. And he is famous for all the right reasons (for the most part). Hemingway never returned to Oak Park after his father committed suicide there with a pistol. His spirit, and his shadow, never left it. The village, the fire escape, the train tracks, and the alleyway are all elements which feed into his fiction, which is why they are captured here in a Walker Evans-style of spontaneous photography.
Saragun Springs 