Traversing the city with my Holga camera, I identified three species of urban nature: the artistic representations and the landscaping that people create, and the ragged, unlikely outgrowths they can't seem to control. Even in the grittiest corners of the city, we try to replicate a bit of the natural world on the buildings that replaced it. We try to constrain an orderly sampling of it within the grid of streets that defines our days. We try to shape nature like we shape the rest of the urban landscape, but the real, wild, untamable thing keeps pushing up through the cracks.

Bio Jennifer Hattam is an editor at an environmental magazine in San Francisco. A journalist by profession and a photographer by obsession, in both her worlds she is a gleaner, listening and looking for the telling detail to capture. Her urban-focused images have been included in almost a dozen group shows. See more of Jennifer's photography online at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhattam/.

Funding for metroblossom is provided in part through the generous support of The University of Chicago Arts Planning Council and Class of 2001 Gift's Student Fine Arts Fund.