New Chicago Work: Photographs by Steve Schapiro

Via Gage Gallery at Roosevelt University


Opening Reception and Q & A with Steve Schapiro and WBEZ’s Jason Marck, Thursday, February 21st, 5-7pm. (Q & A begins at 5:30). Exhibition continues through May 9, 2019

Free and open to the public

This is the second of two exhibitions showcasing the historical and contemporary work of internationally acclaimed photographer Steve Schapiro. The first exhibition that closed on December 22, 2018, was devoted to his contact sheets from the civil rights era. This second exhibition highlights his current photographs from the Black Lives Matter and anti-violence protest movements in Chicago. A smaller exhibition featuring his photographs from Chicago’s Misericordia Heart of Mercy home will also be on display.

American photojournalist Steve Schapiro has documented six decades of American culture, from the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy to Andy Warhol’s Factory and the filming of The Godfather trilogy. He has published a dozen books of his photographs, has exhibited his work in shows from Los Angeles to Moscow, and is represented in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, among others.

Sponsored by The College of Arts and Sciences, Roosevelt University with generous financial support from Susan B. Rubnitz, and Elyse Koren-Camarra, along with a donor who wishes to remain anonymous.

A companion exhibition, “Activists and Icons: The Photographs of Steve Schapiro”, is on display at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie through June 23, 2019.

The exhibition features iconic as well as never-before-seen photos of the Civil Rights Movement and cultural and political change-agents of recent history. For more information, visit ilholocaustmuseum.org.

View more of Steve Schapiro's work here.

New exhibits feature Gallery photographer Steve Schapiro

Steve Schapiro, Stop Police Killings, Selma, 1965

New exhibits feature Gallery photographer Steve Schapiro: “Civil Rights Era Contact Sheets" at Gage Gallery; “Activists and Icons: The Photographs of Steve Schapiro” at Illinois Holocaust Museum; and “Time is Now: Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin’s America" on display at the Sert Gallery (Harvard).

View the Steve Schapiro collection here.

From the Vault of Art Shay: Witness To The 1968 Democratic Convention

Art Shay: “Welcome Democrats” Hilton Hotel, Michigan Avenue, August 1968, 

Democratic Convention

Via Chicagoist

"Time magazine opened and closed their eight-page story with big pictures of mine, but somehow overlooked my favorite. "Welcome Democrats," according to David Mamet—who covered the Convention as his first assignment—was the one picture that summed up the war between the army, police, Hippies and confused delegates. He bought a vintage 16"x20" print from me to hang over his writing desk. "It reminds me of where I came from, every morning. The quintessential portrait of Chicago in extremis."  (©Art Shay)


Art Shay, 1922- 2018, has taken photos of kings, queens, celebrities and the common man in a 60-year career. In 2012, Art reflected on the last time tensions between police and protesters exploded, as Chicago prepared for the NATO summit.)

"I don't have to pull down the well-researched committee indictment against the rioting police. I'm in the report, but all I have to do is look down at the three center fingers on my right hand, clubbed into insensitive, bent digits by the baton of a cop whose number I was copying down in the battle zone park across from the Hilton. He was wielding his baton mercilessly at a young, elusive college woman, aiming to draw blood from her suburban head protected only by an already red-dyed high school babushka. I was merely a target of opportunity for daring to point my Leica at this uniformed asshole as he swung, grunted and danced with the unbalanced effort of malfeasance.

The first Hippie I met was none other than Abbie Hoffman at the then-Y on Wabash near the Hilton. I pointed my camera at his wounded face, still puffy from six hours in police custody. "They grabbed me because of this." He pointed to his forehead on which the large word "FUCK" had been self-mercurochromed.

Welcome, Democrat.

Interrogated while being alternately beaten by three bullyaks, Abbie said he at first denied planning to poison the lake. "Then these guys got so preposterous I confessed to wanting merely to piss in the lake and poison everyone in Chicago." That's when they started punctuating their blows with grunts of "fag," "Hippie Commie," and worse.

He wouldn't let me shoot his picture for Time Magazine, "because no matter what you say, they'll take the police point of view... Republicans."

He did let me buy him the eggplant special for supper, a pre-Avatar sick shade of blue-green"

Poet Allen Ginsberg shown raising his hands in surrender to the police, 

Chicago Democratic Convention, 1968

Clear the Park, Chicago, 1968 

All photographs are copyright Art Shay and are available for purchase from Monroe Gallery of Photography.


Related: 1968: It Was 50 Years Ago Today

"one of those giants, Art Shay, still walks among us"

 SPOTLIGHT "ART SHAY: HIS LIFE AND LOVE"

Via Crain's Chicago Business

The golden age of photojournalism may be long past, but the work of its giants—Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White, W. Eugene Smith, Henri Cartier-Bresson—continues to amaze and inspire. Many Chicagoans may not realize that one of those giants, Art Shay, still walks among us.

A new exhibit at the Art Center Highland Park, "Art Shay: His Life and Love," combines many of the greatest hits of his long career as a shooter for Time, Life, Fortune and many other mid-20th-century photography showcases, with a subgroup of more personal images of his 67-year marriage to Florence Shay, a rare-book dealer in Highland Park.

The photos of Florence, who died in 2012 of cancer, are included in "My Florence: A 70-year love story," published in January. These are among the most poignant images in the show: vivacious and flirty in Las Vegas, hard at work at her book shop, in the latter stages of terminal illness.

More immediately accessible to many viewers will be Shay's candid and uncannily revealing portraits of many of the 20th century's leading figures, including Marlon Brando, Muhammad Ali, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. In every case, Shay, now 92, captures his subjects in some unguarded moment that suggests an aspect of his or her personality that was rarely glimpsed.

The show also includes some of Shay's hidden-camera work. "I once shot some photos at a Mafia trial in Columbus, Ohio, in a courtroom where cameras were not allowed," Shay says. "I later got a letter from the prosecutor that said: 'Mr. Shay, the next time you are seen in Columbus, you will be subject to arrest for using a camera in the courtroom. P.S.: How did you do it?' "

Through April 4 (free)

Monroe Gallery of Photography will feature several of Art Shay's photographs during the AIPAD Photography Show at the Park Avenue Armory (Booth #119), April 16 - 19, 2015.

Art Shay: The man with the golden lens

Muhammad Ali in 1961, when he was still Cassius Clay. “In terms of particulars,” says documentarian Ken Hanson, “this photo is as perfect as it gets.”  Art Shay

Art Shay:


"They're ranking me one of the great photographers of the last century," he says of the Art Institute show. "I sort of agree. I'm not as dead as some."


A wonderful in-depth article about the 92-yean old prolific photographer Art Shay via the Chicagoreader.com with slideshow.

CHICAGO TONIGHT: VIVIAN MAIER

Self-Portrait of Vivian Maier ©Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection

Via Chicago Tonight

"We begin a three-part series on the amazing story of Vivian Maier -- the Chicago nanny who took more than a hundred thousand photos during her lifetime but never showed them to anyone. Now that she's gone, her photos have been discovered, and some say she may rank among the top street photographers of the 20th century.

Jay Shefsky brings us Vivian Maier's remarkable story on Chicago Tonight at 7:00 pm.
Watch on Wednesday for part two, as we explore the meteoric rise of Vivian Maier’s popularity around the world. And tune in on Thursday for part three, to see how the mystery of Maier's life and work has inspired people to learn more about her."

Part 1 Video here.


Related:

Chicago History Museum: Vivian Maier's Chicago, 1601 N. Clark St. Chicago, IL 60614, opens September 8

Vivian Maier: Discovered

Anatomy of an iconic photograph

(Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune / May 20, 2012 )

A Chicago police officer throws a punch at a protester who broke a stick over another officer's head.

Via The Chicago Tribune

James Janega interviews the Tribune's Brian Cassella, who is the photographer behind the photo of a Chicago police officer punching a protester during the NATO summit.

NPPA WORKING TO RELEASE PHOTOGRAPHER ARRESTED AT NATO SUMMIT

 

 Via National Press Photographers Association

CHICAGO, IL (May 21, 2012) – At least one photographer was arrested and another struck over the head with a police baton late Sunday while covering anti-war protesters marching in opposition to the NATO summit in Chicago.

Details are sparse, but photographs posted on Twitter and other Web sites show Getty Images freelance photographer Joshua Lott being arrested on Sunday night,while another photograph shows Getty's Scott Olson with blood streaming down his face after being hit with a Chicago police baton.

Sixty heads of state gathered in Chicago for a two-day NATO meeting to discuss the war in Afghanistan and other global defense issues. Reports say more than 2,500 journalists are there to cover the thousands of protesters who converged on the NATO meeting. Chicago's police responded to the influx of protesters and reporters by deploying thousands of police clad in riot gear, not only Chicago officers but also police pulled in from departments outside of the city.

NPPA's lawyer Mickey H. Osterreicher joined forces with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to support a hotline for journalists arrested or assaulted while covering NATO protesters.

NPPA's lawyer was allowed to meet with Lott in an attorney interview room to let the photojournalist know that NPPA was there and working on his release, and Osterreicher then waited outside a Chicago police station for Lott until he was released shortly before 4 a.m. Monday morning.

Osterreicher said that for the most part, outside of Sunday night's late clash that included Lott, the Chicago police had been "very restrained" in dealing with photographers.

Calls and emails to Getty Images at the editorial picture desk in New York asking for more information have not been answered. Unconfirmed reports say that Lott's cameras were smashed by police, and that while he had been originally arrested on a more serious charge it had been reduced to a lesser charge before he was released on a personal bond.

The photograph posted on Twitter by The Toronto Star of Lott being arrested was credited to Spencer Platt.

There will be more NATO protests in Chicago on Monday.

Related: Department of Justice Warns Police Against Violating Photographers' Rights

American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White

THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
February 5–May 15, 2011


Galleries 1–4

Overview: In the 1930s, photographers pushed the genre of documentary photography to the forefront of public culture in the United States and onto the walls of newly opened museums and art galleries. That historic development receives new insight with this exhibition focusing exclusively on the work of American photographers Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, and Margaret Bourke-White.

 

 Walker Evans. Posed Portraits, New York, 1932. The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Mrs. James Ward Thorne. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.



Photographic activity flourished in America in the 1930s during the Great Depression, and the genre of documentary emerged as a mode of understanding contemporary events. While the world was in a turbulent state—national and international economies were being severely tested, political systems were in flux, and Europe was preparing again for war—Americans recognized their own viable cultural heritage and sought to record and expand that heritage. Indeed, the country’s literary, artistic, and architectural traditions were fortified in the period’s explosion of popular literature, the founding of new art museums, and the establishment of New Deal government-funded arts programs.

At the same time, advances in technology, production, and distribution transformed mass media in this country: Americans enjoyed weekly picture magazines, radio broadcasts, and popular movies in unprecedented numbers. Photography played an especially critical role in contemporary culture, appearing in books, newspapers, and magazines as well as being accorded exhibitions in art museums and galleries. Photographs crossed the boundaries between public and private use, impersonal documentation and expressive creation, and popular visual culture and fine art.

American Modern examines the practice of documentary photography through the work of three of the most important photographers of the decade, each of whom contributed a fundamental, independent, and novel idea about documentary to the common pool of artistic practice. For Abbott, it was the notion that photography was a means of critical dialogue and communication. Evans thoroughly investigated the idea that photography has a unique and essential relationship to time. And Bourke-White’s documentary practice fused the logic and pageantry of modern industry with the drama and individual narratives of its subjects.

Catalogue: A lavishly illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

Sponsor:

This exhibition is co-organized by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine.

The exhibition and accompanying publication have been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, and the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Support for the Chicago presentation of this exhibition is generously provided in part by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Generous support is provided by members of the Exhibitions Trust: Kenneth and Anne Griffin, Thomas and Margot Pritzker, the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation, Donna and Howard Stone, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Sullivan, and an anonymous donor