RECOMMENDED

Those with a taste for post-apocalyptic landscapes and lovers of our sweet home will find no better treat upon which to feast their eyes than this show containing thirty-three lucid yet dreamy, light-rose-brown albumen-silver prints shot and developed by an unknown and keenly sensitive photographer a month after the devastating Chicago fire of 1871. The ruins of breweries, gas works, churches, palatial homes, stores and all other edifices that grace a great modern city are placed before us shot with an eye attuned to the conventions of the travel photographers of the time who captured the monumental remains of ancient civilizations with a sense of lost magnificence. We have all heard about the fire, but here we are given a glimpse of the shell of a vibrant city that existed before the one in which we now live. Be prepared to experience deep meditative sentiments of haunting beauty that the artists of another age—continuous with yet incredibly distant from ours—knew how to evoke. (Michael Weinstein)

Through August 23 at City Gallery, in the Water Tower, 806 N. Michigan.