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 
Dale
Your photography is as vivid as your prose. The angles, looking up, stand out and the selections catch the eye.
There are few writers as admired and despised by their non-readers than Hemingway. He might have been amused, but he was also known for his temper.
Happy 2026!
Leila
LikeLike
Hi Leila!
Lest anyone think I was just shooting from the hip, the truth is I was doing that but I did it many many times and then spent time considering which pictures (of dozens of the same subject) were the best for this series. Selectivity, choosing the best from a mass of average or mediocre things, is so key these days!
Thanks to the photographer and artist Vivian Maier, a person who haunted many of the places I’ve hung out in Chicagoland without me knowing it. She even lived less than a mile away from me; not once, but twice.
She died in Oak Park.
DWB
LikeLike
Hi Dale
Your essay brings me right back to Chicago. When I left Union Station walking around between Amtrak trains. It was a bewildering experience to be in a true metropolis. My head craned back looking up at the shimmering sky scrapers. Going to Chicago is one of my travel highlights! Even though when I drove a taxi for the railroad it was part of the job, but still there’s something so special and adventurous about the big city.
Living In Indiana with Chicago being just across the border reaching its way east through those other cities makes me feel like Hoosiers are deeply connected to the city. Even feeling a sort of adopted pride. To be so close to “The Bears and The Bulls.”
And now to learn E. Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright were from Chicago is amazing! Those pictures you took are really awesome!
Very sad about Hemingway’s father. The fire escape looks haunted. A place where James Cagney would make a last stand with a machine gun and search lights!
I have the same kind of fascination with Frank L. W, cannot name many other architects , besides the Nazi, Albert Speer. I know a Japanese man designed the “Twin Towers.” I like to look at F.W.’s buildings. The artistry is amazing!
Great essay that invokes a lot of thought!
CJA
LikeLike
Christopher
One of the most haunting trips I ever took was when I visited Taliesin in Wisconsin, which is Frank Lloyd Wright’s place.
One time, when Wright was down in Oak Park working, his girlfriend and her two kids were staying up at his place in Wisconsin. (He was still married at the time.)
She, her two kids, and four other people were slaughtered by a grounds worker on the property. He used an ax. And fire. Seven slaughtered, two children and one woman and four men. The further details about how it happened beat anything Steven King ever invented. (I have a poem about this I’ve never been able to finish.) The murderer also burned down half of the building where the seven people had been having lunch. He interrupted their lunch with fire and an ax. Wright went temporarily blind when he heard about it.
Another connection Indiana and Illinois have is Abraham Lincoln. When you live in a land where giants walked (and everybody in America does if you’re aware of it), the places you yourself move through become much more meaningful and life itself takes on a deeper coloring. And I know you know that very well.
Thanks for your commentary all the time!
Dale
LikeLike
PS Christopher
One of the things I love about Wright’s work is how IRREGULAR it is – wildly so. At Taliesin in Wisconsin, too, he has a whole room filled with Buddha statues up near the ceiling and Walt Whitman quotes carved into the walls. His bedroom/office is probably the wildest room I’ve ever seen. The dude was a visionary. And he LOVED landscape and nature, especially the prairie Midwest.
Dale
LikeLike
I have only read a small amount of Hemingway’s writing. I enjoyed it for the most part but I’ll be honest I didn’t know where he came from so these images are quite a treat. Thank you and Happy New Year. dd
LikeLike
Diane
Thanks so much for your regular commentary on my work, I can’t even tell you how much I appreciate it. Happy new year to you and yours!!
Dale
PS
My column this Sunday is about a murder mystery.
LikeLike