Uptown Chicago: Mid-1970s

A lady named Joanne Asala edits a website called CompassRose.org. It contains a history of Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. She discovered my Uptown photos yesterday and asked if she could post a few on her website. I gladly agreed. There must be a great deal of interest in them. She posted the shots around 10pm last night and by 4am this morning, I already had more than 800 new visitors to my site! I have approximately 4000 images that I took in Chicago Uptown in the mid-1970’s. See the story about how and why I shot them in the About section, then review some of the photos. I’ll be posting more in the coming days and weeks as time permits.

Digitizing the Past

Most of the photos were originally shot on film with a Nikon F2, though some were taken with a Rollei SL66 medium format camera. Digitizing all of them may take a while because I have a business to run. But I’ll try to post at least a dozen new ones each week. Please check back from time to time to see updates.

Portrait of a Neighborhood

Most of these Chicago Uptown images are NOT landmarks. I tried to capture a sense of the place through the people that comprised it. Be forewarned: Uptown in that era was a pretty rough neighborhood, so some of these images may be hard to look at. However, it was also a place of love and compassion. People thrown together by poverty somehow struggled through it and managed to survive … with the help of each other.