City streets are perhaps the most paradoxically anonymous and personal of all public spaces in the city: people blindly collide in their rush to reach their destinations, while the homeless look for humanity amid the thousands passing by. Gary Stochl captures this daily drama in On City Streets, a penetrating examination of the unpredictable people, places, and events that make up the streets of downtown Chicago. It is a stunning collection made even more so by the fact that this is the first work of Stochl’s to be seen in his forty years as a photographer.

In an interesting article published on The Online Photographer, Ken Tanaka recalls the fairytale-like story of when “one day in 2004, Bob Thall, chair of Chicago’s Columbia College Photo Department, was met at his office by a rather unusual visitor. [...] Thall’s secretary told him that the man said he had some photos to show someone. Thall invited the man into his office where he introduced himself as Gary Stochl. He told Thall that he had been doing photography for forty years but hadn’t really shown his work to anyone. He thought Columbia College’s photo department was a good place to start.”

“What a start! After browsing some of the approximately 300 loose prints from Stochl’s shopping bag Thall abandoned his afternoon schedule and instead, with some of his colleagues, spent the next two hours reviewing the rest. Those black and white prints captured on downtown Chicago’s streets since the 1960s were some of the best street photographs he had ever seen.”

Ken Tanaka continues in his article explaining that “what makes this work so darn good is that it so perfectly embodies the four ingredients required to create good candid street imagery; an imaginative eye, the ping-pong timing reflexes to react to that imagination, the technical skill to actually use a camera to get the shot, and, most importantly, the courage to actually do it. [...] Stochl actually goes far beyond those prerequisites. He captures the gestures, the juxtapositions, and the frame compositions to package the humor and enigmas that the greatest street photography consistently delivers. What makes his images so darn good is that, like all of the genuinely great street shots, they brand themselves deeply into your eye’s memory.”