Photography

A book of stunning black and white photographs, capturing the events, people, and landscape of Chicago’s Washington Park during the summer of 1987. 

Located in Chicago’s South side and designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Washington Park takes its name from the first president of the United States. But in 1987, for at least one joyous summer, the community claimed it as their own—even renamed it Harold Washington Park—as depicted in this vibrant collection of work by Chicagoan and photographer, Rose Blouin. The resulting images represent a profile of Chicago’s Black community in a place where they come together for recreation, festivals, sports, community events, parades, weddings, and other arts and cultural events.

These photographs brim with the delights of summer: a verdant natural world, food, fun, music, family gatherings, and a community inhabiting the vast expanse of the Chicago park.They embody the diversity, strength, and humanity of the people for whom Washington Park is a summertime gathering place. To Washington Park, With Love includes forewords by Eve L. Ewing and Adrienne Brown, contextualizing and celebrating the 140 black and white photographs from Blouin’s indispensable body of work.

A visual and verbal narrative of the grit and gentleness in Southwestern Latinx communities through photography by Antonio Salazar and poetry by José Olivarez, author of Citizen Illegal.

Guns, tattoos, pit bulls, and cars appear alongside a tender aubade, a couple holding hands, a baby bathing in a kitchen sink; landscapes and skylines in Phoenix and Los Angeles show palm trees and messy garages; long white socks and acrylic nails of younger generations meet the smiles and traditions of elders. In a society that would rather disappear or ignore its own grittier dimensions, Salazar’s work is both a refusal to be silenced and a love letter to the communities that sing, dance, live, and love, in their own beautiful and dangerous ways.

Alongside Salazar’s powerful visual narrative, a series of poetry by José Olivarez appears throughout the book. Each poem “speaks” in its own way—to, of, with, and beyond the subjects of Salazar’s photos—with humor, honesty, and compassion. These artists together in Por Siempre are a force: expanding and lifting each other’s best parts, as those in sincere and caring communities often do. 

On April 18, 2015, the city of Baltimore erupted in mass protests in response to the brutal murder of Freddie Gray by police. Devin Allen was there, and his iconic photos of the Baltimore uprising became a viral sensation.
In these stunning photographs, Allen documents the uprising as he strives to capture the life of his city and the people who live there. Each photo reveals the personality, beauty, and spirit of Baltimore and its people, as his camera complicates popular ideas about the "ghetto."
Allen's camera finds hope and beauty doing battle against a system that sows desperation and fear, and above all, resistance, to the unrelenting pressures of racism and poverty in a twenty-first-century American city.