STREET SCENE IN WEST SIDE CHICAGO. THIS AREA WAS SLOW TO RECOVER FROM THE RIOTS AND FIRES OF THE MID AND LATE 1960’S ACCORDING TO THE 1970 CENSUS, SOME 22 TO 29% OF THE AREA'S RESIDENTS WERE BELOW THE POVERTY LEVEL. THEN A GROUP OF BLACK BUSINESSMEN FORMED THE GARFIELD ORGANIZATION INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL ASSOCIATION. WITH FEDERAL HELP THEY REACHED AGREEMENTS WITH SEVERAL NATIONAL FRANCHISES THAT RESULTED IN JOBS FOR AREA RESIDENTS THAT TOTALLED $20 MILLION BY 1974

Featured on PDR in the collection John H. White’s Photographs of Black Chicago for DOCUMERICA (1973–74)

It’s hard not to read John H. White’s DOCUMERICA series as a love letter to Black Chicago. Whether capturing protesters or checkers players, concerts or chores, White’s work feels animated by a wonder and curiosity for the great breadth of stories and characters he encountered while exploring his adopted home city — “life”, as he put it in the captions to several of his images, “in all its seasons”.