After a long afternoon of photographing in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood during the mid-1970s, I was returning to the Wilson Street El Station to catch a train back to Rogers Park where I lived at the time.
As I turned the corner, I saw this elderly woman sitting in the middle of the steps, resting her weary bones. She had just returned from a shopping trip downtown and needed a rest after navigating this long series of steps. I shot this image in 1974, 16 years before the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The Wilson El station of that era was designed to move large numbers of people quickly; few accommodations were made for the elderly or the disabled. If you were on crutches…
