 |
|
Chicago's South Side, 1946-1948 (Series in Contemporary Photography, 1) | 
 enlarge | Author: Wayne F. Miller
Publisher: University of California Press
Category: Book
List Price: $34.95
Buy New: $14.91
You Save: $20.04 (57%)
New (12) Used (12) from $14.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 393647
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 127
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.4
Dimensions (in): 11.1 x 10.3 x 0.7
ISBN: 0520223160
Dewey Decimal Number: 977.31100496073
EAN: 9780520223165
ASIN: 0520223160
Publication Date: September 28, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Expedited shipping is not available for this item. Items are mailed via USPS media mail within 2 business days and should arrive 4-14 business days later.
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Wayne Miller's photographs chronicle a black Chicago of fifty years ago: the South Side community that burgeoned as thousands of African Americans, almost exclusively from the South, settled in the city during the Great Migration of the World War II years. The black-and-white images provide a visual history of Chicago at the height of its industrial order--when the stockyards, steel mills, and factories were booming--but, more important, they capture the intimate moments in the daily lives of ordinary people. Miller was adept at becoming invisible, and his photographs are full of naked, disarming emotion.
One of the first Western photographers to document the destruction of Hiroshima and the survivors of the bombing, Wayne Miller had just returned from his stint as a World War II Navy combat photographer under the direction of Edward Steichen when he received two concurrent Guggenheim fellowships to fund his Chicago project. Taken over a course of three years beginning in 1946, his photographs span city scenes from storefront church services to slaughterhouse workers in the taverns at night to a couple making love. In addition to affording a glimpse into the hopes and hardships shared by a community of migrants who had just made the long journey from the rural South to the urban North, the images collected in Chicago's South Side reflect the enormous variety of human experiences and emotions that occurred at a unique time and place in the American landscape.
A few celebrities appear in these images--Paul Robeson, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington. But mostly we see ordinary people--in clubs and at church, sporting events, parades. Much is on view that is of interest to the student of mid-twentieth-century black Chicago: the neighborhoods Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas traversed in Native Son, the Bronzeville limned in Gwendolyn Brooks's earliest poems, and the street life that inspired the urbanscapes of painter Archibald Motley. The kitchenette apartments that Miller so deftly memorializes are bursting with people of all ages sleeping, dressing, courting, and dreaming. One senses the intimacy between his subjects and the emotions that animate their lives.
Gordon Parks's memoir of poverty and hope in the freezing tenements of the South Side supplements the photographs, while Robert Stepto's essay contextualizes the South Side in the history of postwar Chicago. Chicago's South Sideis a superb testament to the talent of the photographer, to the spirit of the people the images portray, and to the moment in American history these photographs capture.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
Miller's Chicago, South Side Study September 12, 2007
while in France recently at Chalon-sur-Soane I visited their photography museum. They were doing a special exhibit of this work. I was so totally impressed on how Miller could capture these photos while seeming to be invisable to his subjects that I investigated when I returned and discovered that this book was available. I bought TWO; one for myself and one for my daughter who is a serious photographer.
Extraordinary photographic record ... and extraordinary photographs August 12, 2006
These striking images of Bronzeville -- "Chicago's Harlem" -- will blow you away. The humanity they portray, in all its beaten-down, lifted-up, heartbreaking reality, makes me wish I knew personally every man and woman depicted herein.
Wayne Miller, a white photographer now well into his 80s, went into the Bronzeville ghetto over a two-year period and made these touching pictures; then they "went into a drawer" for 40 years, until finally the Univ of Calif Press published this book. (The book itself is as well-produced a book of photographs as you are likely to find anywhere.)
My grandfather Nathan Joseph ran the States Theatre at 3507 S. State St., in the heart of Bronzeville, for some 50 years (unfortunately the States is not depicted herein). I myself have written a novel of Bronzeville called "To Love Mercy" (Mid-Atlantic Highlands, ISBN 0-9744785-3-9). A historical Afterword appears at the end of "To Love Mercy;" it is an oral history of Bronzeville, in the voices of a dozen people who lived there in the '40s and '50s. This Afterword is illustrated with seven of Wayne Miller's photos from "Chicago South Side, 1946-1948."
I have given close to a dozen copies of "Chicago South Side" as gifts. I was coming to Amazon to buy two more copies when I saw this opportunity to write a review.
These photos have moved me to tears. Buy this book.
Shocking and Intimate November 28, 2001
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is a treasure. I wish I could find more by this photographer (my searches have come up empty). The photographs take you right inside each scene, and often pack a powerful punch of sadness, joy, intimacy, life. The printing quality is excellent. If the publisher can collect more of his work, I will be the first customer.
Marvelous collection of images October 14, 2001
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a marvelous collection of images from everyday Balck Chicago life in the late 1940s. There are scenes of street life, back alleys, patrons at a pool hall and tavern, and night life ranging from a female personator dressing to Duke Ellington hunched at a piano at rehearsal and an ebullient Louis Jordan on stage.
Brilliant, passionate photography October 16, 2000
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is one of the best photographic books I've seen -- ever. Wayne Miller manages to make personal contact with the human beings who lived on Chicago's South Side in a way that few photographers have ever matched. The warmth and complexity of these photographs, the compassion and human understanding involved, are most remarkable -- especially since the photographer stood on the other side of America's terrible racial divide from his subjects. Anyone who loves classic documentary photography, or who simply loves human beings in their complexity, should order this book.
|
|
|
Disclaimer: This is an Amazon storefront - the products referenced on this site are manufactured and sold by other parties and sold through Amazon.com We make no representations regarding either the products or any information vendors offer about their products. Any questions, complaints, or claims regarding the products must be directed to the appropriate manufacturer or vendor, or to Amazon.com. |
| |
|
