On July 1, 1974, the Illinois State Lottery started selling tickets. Lotteries are like capitalism extrapolated the the Nth degree. Anyone can walk in, plunk down a dollar, and potentially walk out a millionaire. I photographed this woman on Independence Day that year. She had just bought one of the first lottery tickets and was telling me she was sure it was going to transform her life. I hope it did. Note the signs in the window in the background. Next to the sign featuring the lottery, there was another featuring food stamps. Such were the ironies of life in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood during the mid-1970s.
