"Occidens" is the Latin present participle of "occidere" — to fall, to set, the sun going down in the west — and the title does what the other Latin titles in this portfolio do: it names what the image is doing rather than what it depicts. Chicago's lakefront faces east, which means the city turns its back to the sunsets — the lake behind you, the towers ahead, their western facades catching a light that the lake never sees. In the last minutes before the sun drops behind the skyline, those facades go from amber to deep orange to something close to red, the sky above the lake behind the photographer deepening through blue into the first suggestion of night while the buildings are still on fire. Shot on the Leica M11, this is the moment that lasts perhaps eight minutes on a clear evening — after the day's flat light has given way and before the city's own illumination takes over. The sun falls; the city holds the light a little longer than the sky does.
