Lake Series: Photographs by Lincoln Schatz
January 11 – February 22, 2026
How do we understand the passage of time? Seen together these lake photos provide a way to understand. Through this serial investigation of Lake Michigan in photography we are able to see for ourselves the shifting lake patterns over the course of days, weeks, months and years. Each day in the series is unique. No two entirely alike. As time has passed and the project has grown, the subtlety and variation that can exist as a result has grown exponentially.
When the Lake Series began in September 2015, it started as an impulse that became, over time, a ritual. Artist Lincoln Schatz began taking lake pictures. Dedicating a month to photographing the lake each day in morning or evening. As time passed and the series grew in scale, patterns began to emerge and certain positions along the lake became the chosen sites for Schatz to work from. Each site has a special relationship to the landscape that surrounds it and Schatz chooses which site will be used ona given day based on weather conditions, time of day and year. Among other factors. With his back to the city of Chicago, he stands on the lake’s shore and photographs Lake Michigan wit
a medium-format camera, capturing the waters as they stretch toward the horizon.
One month became two, two became three, and the project has continued ever since. Those first lake photos are now the foundations of the Lake Series, a serial exploration of the landscape of Lake Michigan through photography.
Lake Michigan Series
Photograph Dimension: 25” W x 19” H
Total Dimension: 30.5” W x 24.5” H
Lake Michigan Series
Photograph Dimension: 62″ W x 47″ H
Total Dimension: 67.5″ W x 52.5″ H
Lake Michigan Series
Photograph Dimension: 41.75″ W x 31.5″ H (individual, full bleed)
Framed Dimension: 86″ W x 33″ H
Photo Credits: Lincoln Schatz
Exhibition Materials
View the Exhibition Guide to learn more about the exhibition.
About Lincoln Schatz
Artist
Lincoln Schatz is a contemporary artist and environmentalist living in Chicago, Illinois. He is best known for his contemporary art practice that is focused on portraits of places, people and processes over time in photography, video and new media. He has created large scale video and sculptural installations that feature new media technologies, custom built software that uses generative compositional strategies to build artworks that study a subject over an extended period of time in order to create a works that are at once driven by chance and memory.
Building from these works, Schatz has dedicated the last six years to nature photography; Lake Michigan for the Lake Series, the Redwood Forests of California and Oregon, the deserts and mountains that make up the geography of the United States.
Lincoln Schatz’s works have been exhibited internationally including: the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; bitforms gallery, New York, Seoul; Sundance Film Festival, Utah; Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, California and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San
Diego, California. His works are collected internationally and are in numerous public and
private collections including: Museum of Contemporary Photography, Embassy of the United States Kabul, Afghanistan; The Art Institute of Chicago; Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery; Hearst Corporation; Pearl Lam; San Jose Museum of Art; and the Cafritz Collection.
Lincoln Schatz
lincoln@lincolnschatz.com
Studio and Gallery
299 East Ontario
Chicago, IL 60611-3204
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Exhibition Events
Opening Reception and Artist Talk
January 11, 2026
1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods
