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Fullerton L Station, 8:50 p.m.“Here’s an older gentleman caught on a train with a bunch of people half his age,” says Chapman. “They’ve all got purple lanyards around their necks. DePaul is right there, so it could have been something going on at the school. He’s staring at me, giving me a look that says, ‘Get me out of here.’ But his outfit is kind of hip — he might be in his element. It’s a picture that makes you wonder what is going on in his head.”
West Lake Street, 8:13 a.m.“I was heading in the same direction as this woman, but the light was getting to me. So I turned around and saw her. The hand in front of her face, shielding the sun, is what caught my attention.”
Chicago on the Move

Through his shots of people in transit, photographer Graham Chapman captures the lifeblood of the city.

Photography by Graham Chapman
Interview by Mike Thomas
April 27, 2026, 6:00 am

When he was starting out as a photographer, Graham Chapman would focus the lens of his Canon on Chicago’s architecture. But those shots, while artistically pleasing, lacked humanity. “The heartbeat of the city, that’s the people,” he says. “When you get all these people in the street, that brings energy to the imagery.”

His new book, Chicago in Transit, is full of that energy — people in motion, moving (or about to move) by train, bus, taxi, bike, foot. Chapman, who lived in West Town and Bucktown before moving to Naperville, shot the images over the last decade on his public transit commutes to and from work downtown and during his countless hours walking the streets.

“I take the Metra in now, and when you get off at Union Station, it’s just people going in every direction, some fast, some slow, some lingering,” says Chapman, who is a senior content creator for the ad agency Havas. “That’s the kind of thing that makes my blood start pumping.”

West Lake Street, 8:13 a.m.“I was heading in the same direction as this woman, but the light was getting to me. So I turned around and saw her. The hand in front of her face, shielding the sun, is what caught my attention.”
North Michigan Avenue, 9:35 p.m.“I don’t shoot at night a lot. It’s just not my forte. But I keep my eye out for people at bus stops. This Dior poster was glowing, and I thought it was an interesting frame, with the model staring at me and this guy in the middle who has no idea of the connection going on.”
West Randolph Street, 5:44 p.m.“The shots when you point down one of the east-west streets are fun because you can catch some clear sky straight to the lake in the background. I’d seen this guy coming when I was crossing, and I tried to get as right in front of him as I could without getting hit so I could get the blue sky, the green bike strip, and him splitting the difference. Dressed up on a bike is always an interesting look.”
146 Bus, 1:22 p.m.“You don’t see people with newspapers that often. I was scoping him out, waiting for the right moment. I had my backpack on my lap, and my camera on my backpack. I believe he was mid–page turn here — he had kind of lifted the paper up so that he could fold it and grab the next page. And as he was doing that, he caught me. I’m pretty sure he saw the camera. But I wasn’t gonna stop.”
Cermak-Chinatown L station, 11:21 a.m.“I was just hanging out here when I saw this guy dash from one train to another. He’s coming off the northbound, hopping onto the southbound. Not many people hop between trains at this station because it’s not a transfer stop. I’m like, ‘What’s going on? Did he miss his previous stop?’ ”
West Jackson Boulevard, 4:55 p.m.“When I saw this guy in a bus stop with the pipe, it was immediately lens to the eyeball. I’ll always try and take a picture of people smoking. There’s something that looks cool about it, like they have a story. I was trying to be sneaky, but he’s looking right at me. He looks pissed off, too, like, ‘I’m here minding my business, smoking my pipe, and this guy comes and disturbs me.’ ”
West Wacker Drive, 8:10 p.m.“I’m on the south side of Lake Street here. That’s Wolf Point behind her. The Salesforce building was still being constructed to the left, out of frame. I don’t know if those are construction dust particles flying around, but there was so much of it, and the sun was shining through them. I probably stood there 15 minutes trying to get the best image I could.”
West Monroe Street, 11:59 a.m.“One of my favorite things to take pictures of is people in crosswalks. I call them my ‘crosswalk all-stars.’ I just like the way you can frame them up. She has got on this red jacket, with her and her shadow right in the middle, between the white stripes. Typically, I do this from the ground, but here I was in a parking garage shooting down.”
North Michigan Avenue, 8:17 a.m.“In the morning, when the shadows are appearing, there’s so much crazy stuff happening in this spot in front of the Wrigley Building because of the way the light moves around the buildings. I thought this image was cool because of the play on the sizes of the people.”
West Grand Avenue, 5:43 p.m.“When I saw this woman in the front seat of a taxi, she was already looking out the window, and I noticed her glasses and lipstick. The white reflection on the window, from a building or a billboard, is a bonus. It frames her glasses. It’s those little details that make me interested in a photo.”
Adams/Wabash L station, 7:11 p.m.“That’s the best seat in the house on the train because you can look out the rear window while going in reverse. It’s especially easy at night to see who’s in there. He’s posted up, ready for a show.”
North Michigan Avenue, 1:16 p.m.“This is right outside of One Illinois Center. I saw this gentleman waiting for the bus, and when it was approaching, I popped behind the bus stop. There are probably two panes of glass between me and the subjects. It’s fun to catch the reflections that poke through.”
North State Street, 6:02 p.m.“I like to shoot occasionally in the rain just because of the reflections. I was at this intersection, low to the ground, waiting for bikers to come. This is exactly what I was trying to capture. There’s a little reflection, and that backpack screams messenger.”
West Monroe Street, 2:09 p.m.“This was taken shortly after I got my Canon EOS 5D in 2016, so I was still learning it at this point. The way these people were marching in a line directly at me, I was like, ‘OK, I gotta try and snap this.’ This dapper gentleman was just right for the frame, like he’s the leader of the pack, an evil villain who’s got his goons behind him.”