Paul Lurie
Though Paul Lurie has been visiting Door County since the 70s and has always found the countryside beautiful, it was only when he started photographing it that he began to understand the reason. “It has a lot to do with the perspectives the old buildings, pieces of sculpture really, lent to the landscape,” he says. Several images of silos in Lurie’s show at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology pay homage to Richard Serra’s huge spiral sculptures, which Serra designed for viewers to walk through. Other Lurie photographs are striking for the way they make the buildings stand out from their surroundings. All the images are lush and painterly, both technically accomplished and conceptually sophisticated.
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Born in Chicago in 1941 and still a Chicago-area resident, Lurie has been a practicing lawyer since 1965 but has had a longtime interest in art. While in high school at Senn he worked for a wedding photographer, took photography classes, and did photography for the yearbook. He became interested in architecture in 1966, when he got involved in efforts to save Henry Hobson Richardson’s Glessner House, then threatened with demolition. Lurie read up on Richardson, provided legal services, and helped clean out the place for its renovation. He learned more about architecture and art when some of the architects he worked with became clients and he began to specialize in real estate and construction law. Glessner House also helped him gain a sense of the importance of place, as the neighborhood had changed from its former affluence to a mix of rooming houses and industry.
When Through 12/5
