Skyscrapers, Sunlit

The downtown towers are walls of glass, and glass is really a mirror — across the day the buildings throw the light, the sky and each other back and forth between their faces. Chicago's high-rises were among the first to wear full glass curtain walls, the descendants of the steel frame that let the exterior become skin instead of structure.

Photographed June 2024, looking up. The sun edges out from behind a building on the right and lands on the glass of the tower in the center, the reflection flaring against the dark. Black and white turns the moment into pure contrast — one burst of light caught between two shadowed faces.