 It's now my pleasure, Delight, to introduce our speaker today, John Lowenstein. Mr. Lowenstein is an internationally recognized documentary photographer who is based on the south side of Chicago. He's a member and an owner of the International Photography Cooperative called Neur Images that's based in Amsterdam. Mr. Lowenstein has spent the last 10 years working with his adopted community here on Chicago south side, where he's taught photography in the Chicago Public Schools and has run a community newspaper. In collaboration with fellow community members, Mr. Lowenstein is now working to create a south side program called Peace, Justice, and Media, which will aim to offer a new documentary dream space here on the south side. Mr. Lowenstein's work consistently challenges accepted notions about community, poverty, racism, and violence. In addition to his work on Chicago south side, Mr. Lowenstein has also done extensive international work including projects covering elections in Afghanistan, violence in Guatemala, and the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Mr. Lowenstein has received many awards and recognitions. For his work on the south side, he was named a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography. He's also received the 58th National Press Photographers Magazine Photographer of the Year Award and in 2014, he won the Center for Documentary Studies, Darothea Lange, and Paul Taylor Prize. Today, Mr. Lowenstein will present a talk titled A Violent Threat, How Violence Cuts Across the Generations on Chicago South Side. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to John Lowenstein. Well, thank you all so much for taking your time and thanks to everyone, Dr. Siegler and Dr. Selwyn Rogers and Max Claremont and everyone at the University of Chicago who invited me to speak today. You know, I've been, I must say that I'm just extremely excited about the new trauma center that's going to be built and that's going to help improve the quality of life for people in Chicago and in particular here on the south side because that's the first level one trauma center we'll have in almost 30 years. So for those of us who live here, it's going to mean that lives are going to be saved and there's going to be a really new attention to some of the real serious issues of violence but also just everyday living. If you get in a car accident or, you know, hurt yourself, period, and you need to go to a really, you know, high level trauma unit, it's here. And so hopefully we'll have fewer deaths and mitigate some of those problems. Today I'm going to talk, so I'm super happy that that happened, I am going to talk today about the work that I've been doing in Chicago over the course of almost 20 years. A lot of it focusing here on the south side but in particularly, in particular really looking at the issue of wealth inequality, violence, and how we can build more sustainable communities. So that's what I'm kind of working on. I'm a photographer by trade and I've started to get into filmmaking. And so today you're going to get a little bit of both and so I hope you can, you know, really enjoy that. Here's a picture that we started off. What I've been really amazed by is the living and history that's all around us in Chicago and on the south side and a lot of it is disappearing. So I've focused on some of that, some of the background and obviously that's why people came to Chicago, some work. And then I love people. So I really work, the motivations for my work is because I love working with people and my ultimate goal is how to confront the direct structural inequality and institutional racism that we see in the United States and here in the city. I'm also really interested in how does political policy play out on the ground? So how does political policy actually impact individuals and how do they deal with it? So when I'm working in the schools or in the, you know, what actually happens in the street. Ultimately my goal with this work is to bring attention to the inequity within our society to confront the direct institutional and structural inequality and racism here. You know, so often I'm going to talk a little bit more off the cuff because I do a little better than that, that way. Ultimately what I've witnessed in our city is our community here on the south side, many of the communities, not every community, are communities that people migrated to the city from the south in the black community or they moved from Mexico or from other places. And then they came to work and work just in, you know, the 70s and 80s, obviously it dried up because of deindustrialization. And so instead of like our country saying, hey, we have an issue, we have something to do, we've got to really help people. We kind of said, you know what, good luck. These are already marginalized communities, let's just leave them behind. And so we kind of have taken what's really, I think, the heartbeat of America and just kind of said, we don't care about you. And so what this is really built is both very extreme suffering but also a community that's probably one of the most resilient, resourceful and amazing places in our country and the world. And so with the photographs that I do, I really try to show it whether it's a vacant lot that is kind of becoming something else or it's our heroes, you know, or it's just, you know, a young woman and Shaday Macklin and one of her friends in the community. I worked in for about five years at the Paul Revere Elementary School teaching photography and working in many ways as a liaison between the Comer Science and Education Foundation and the community at a time when they were trying to build bridges and build a new model for change in the city, in the neighborhood. And it's kind of like you're coming into a place that nobody knows you. And so you just have to be open and put your best foot forward. And so when I taught, I always just came to an open mind and then slowly, I first worked in the school and then slowly made my way out into the community and tried to work in a way that was collaborative with people, which is why I really like working with the Polaroid camera. Because the Polaroid at that time was really the best instant camera to give people a picture. This was pre, really before digital had become ubiquitous. So the great thing about it is you could take a picture and then hand it over to your subjects and that was just a really cool thing. So when I say I'm thinking about resilience and hope, I'm talking about the people in the community who really are being, in some ways, the communities are literally being erased. So this is Robert Taylor Holmes shortly before they were taken all destroyed. In Chicago we had about 100,000 people who were displaced in the community and in public housing between 1995 and 2010. And the public housing projects that were torn down were home. And although there were a lot of problems in the community, that was home. And we really get down to the, what are the basic things that build a strong community, right? That's good housing. People need a good community, a community where they can be together and live. Education, opportunities, gainful employment, how to make money and support your family, public infrastructure, mental health. And in each one of these, which we call social determinants of health, it feels, and actually what's been going on in Chicago is that there's been privatizing and in a lot of ways profiteering or taking money from the public sector and moving it into private companies. And so in 2012, Rahm Emanuel closed 55 public schools. Some of those are being opened as charter schools now. And there's not anything particularly bad about a charter school. It's just that it can be that public funds are going into private hands. So I think that's a challenge. In the long run, what I see is that it's led to the willful destruction of the neighborhood. And I think that what's left behind is, give me one second, I'm sorry. So if, I'm sorry, let me restart that. In terms of the community and what build, we want to build healthy communities. And these different areas, I think it's very important that we develop the different structures in place. And in Chicago, instead of thinking about how can we build the, in Chicago on the south side, instead of thinking about what are the best ways to build these communities, we've been really just neglecting them. And not allowing, you know, not putting the resources, time and care into building them up and to making them strong. Just show a few pictures. The net effect of this kind of willful destruction of the community means that there's an increase in violence in our neighborhoods, interpersonal violence. And this plays out in extreme levels of violence within the neighborhood. This is a very personal thing that happens between people who often grow up together. So who suffers? I say, we all do. My question is, instead of, we always think that it's just people in the neighborhood are suffering. But I believe that everybody in our community and in the city suffers when one person is shot or killed. The reverberations are very big. They reverberate not only through the direct individual and their family, but throughout the entire community. And we find that people express themselves afterwards in a lot of different ways. It creates a level of personal trauma and mental health problems that are not really addressed. In fact, that's another area that we've, in the city, we've closed a lot of mental health facilities. So what I do, and I think the best way to explain what I do is probably I make personal connections. I'm trying to talk from the paper, but I think the best way to describe this is how I would go about taking this picture. This one, I heard that there was a murder, triple murder, around in the wild hundreds, around 100th Street. So I just start, I go over there and I start kind of talking to the people, asking them what happened and relating. Just seeing what's going on. And in this case, there were three people murdered and one person was the woman's son. So that's a very sensitive situation. And I do my best to really enter those situations in a way that doesn't leave a bad taste in people's mouth afterwards. I find that it's very easy as a photographer to think you get to take the picture. But in this case, what I did, and this is where the Polaroid actually is a beautiful thing, because I could take the picture, talking to them, and I asked their permission, in this case, asking their permission. They said, yeah, it's no problem. Ask them what happened. I kind of retreated a little bit and I took the picture and then, if you see, I gave them a photograph and they have that. And I find that sometimes, I don't know about these people, but sometimes the photograph, people come up to me years later and say, hey man, can you take another picture because my girlfriend took that, or my ex-girlfriend took that picture. And I need that. And it's really changed. I think the relationship in the community to photography has changed so rapidly because of social media and because of smart phones. And I'll show you in the video. I'm going to show you something that touches on that. We also, when I talk about history, that direct and living history and structures are all around us and they're kind of crumbling, almost as a sign of the way the community in some ways crumbled. But at the same time, this is like the Acme Coke plant. It represented thousands and thousands of jobs over many, many years because the plant was open over 100 years. Chicago was the center of our industrial world at one point. And that was the South Side, right? You know, U.S. Steelworks, Acme Coke plant, all these different places used to be the center and how we got here, how people came to the city and how they knew Chicago was a place, a city that works. And documenting that and then talking to people is like the place, the destruction of the place mirrors the destruction of the willful destruction of the community. And I think from my point of view, instead of seeing, and I think that comes from how we see marginalized communities, like the city, the Chicago, the South Side, how we see undocumented people. We don't see these communities as communities that have so much potential and resources. We just see them as a place to discard after the money has been extracted. And in fact, we're still extracting the money. So when we say that we close 50 public schools, yeah, okay, most people just think, oh, they're closing public schools because that's a good thing to do, because that's going to make the education better. But in fact, the schools, for a lot of these communities, the neighborhood school, albeit some of them need work, of course, CPS needs a lot of work, but at the same time, it's the community center. At Revere, where I worked, before there was the Comer Center in Grand Crossing, Revere was the community center. And people came and mothers and kids, people came after school, there were programs in the school, people stayed afterwards, and that for many kids was the community center because there were no and are no community centers before that there. So the IDB Wells, when I went over there and I was taking this picture of these two young guys and they walked by and they wanted me to take their picture, that they know their houses and their community is being smashed, destroyed, their whole family and everyone they grew up with is being thrown to the forewinds, they know that, but there's still a pride of place. And so that place was already raised and they said, hey, take our picture here, because they know they want to be, that's home. So I don't know, like when we think of exile, I don't know what it's like to not be able to go back to your home. But when you grew up somewhere and that was what you had, really because a lot of people in Chicago, what they have is their neighborhood, their block, their community, that's what they have. And when you destroy it and you can't go back to that, that creates a whole host of other problems. So now we see that people being dispersed, sent out from one community to the next, people who are mortal enemies. In Chicago when you have two blocks, they might be enemies. People on the same block might be enemies for whatever reason. Your cousin killed my brother, my brother killed your cousin, you know, who knows, my friend, my home he killed. And it can be so, and so that's how it goes. Violence that happens is very personal. The community is very strong, but the same person who holds that kid up, this is an elder, but that violence is reverberating in that home, I guarantee you, because this is Sam Binion's home, who's one of my very good friends. And I can tell you his son is in prison in Arizona for attempted, for accessory to murder, and he's had a lot of friends and people, but he still works to change the community. So it's like we can't extricate the interpersonal violence from the social inequality, from the wealth inequality. It's like you're saying, okay, you can just basically try to erase things, close schools, break down houses, do all these things. Police put people in prison for nonviolent drug offenses, for things that you wouldn't be put in prison for in other places, but you expect them to just continue to find a way. And they do, and people do, and that's what's amazing. It's like people don't stop living and don't stop loving. They go to the butt-bill, and every year it says, you know, Chicago, it's one of the things that people miss about the South Side is the joy. I got that from Mary Petillo in one of her interviews, but it's true. It's like one of the things we miss is like the joy, connection, love, and when people embrace you here in Chicago, it's like no other embrace. I'm going to show a few more pictures. So I've been really puzzling over, I've been here in Chicago for more than 20 years, and I've been puzzling over that question. Why do we not do better? Why don't the resources and the fundamental things to build sustainable communities come? Why aren't they allotted to communities on the South Side, communities on the West Side, struggling communities in the South Suburban? Why is that? I don't really know. I know, I don't really know, because you talk a lot about violence, we talk a lot about violence, about the impact of young people killing each other. This is a guy who got killed, his name was John O, Jonathan Williams. He was killed in the, he was a guy who lived in the pocket, which is in Grand Crossing, and the pocket in Syracan have been going back and forth for generations, just back and forth. Two communities fighting each other. Go over the viaduct, kill them, come back, you guys kill us. And you think to yourself, and we just accept this, that this is normal. Really, it's like in the kids and the young people, we accept it, right? We're like, oh, okay, man. You know, people are like, oh, he got killed. I've been working with a young man named Anthony Manuel, and he's been involved ever since he was my student, and his family was my student, were my students at Paul Revere. This guy, we were hanging out, I'm doing a film with him. We were hanging out one day this summer. He knew four separate young people, friends, who had been killed that day. Four, not four in one shooting. Four people who had been killed in separate shootings in the same day. And it was like, I said, really? He goes, yeah. And it's like so accepted, he won't, this guy and his friends, you won't see him much on the street anymore. When they were young, they ran the streets, caused a lot of pain, and had a lot of pain caused to them. They were victims, perpetrators, all in one. But these guys, you won't see him on the street right now. They don't move. They only move in a car. He won't walk down a block with me, because he's so afraid of getting shot. He's so afraid of someone killing him. He's not alone. And we're just sort of sitting here, like, it's normal. It's normal that this stuff is erased, like the buildings we destroyed. You know, that young kid, I wonder what he's doing now. This is at 51st and just west of Halstead. I know what this guy's doing now. He's a successful photographer and filmmaker. So this is a young man named Matthias Pernell. And he's a great kid. I've always sort of wondered about that picture. He loved it. He's always like, man, you took that really awesome picture. I really like this picture. But it's like, why did he feel the need to cover his head? I don't know. He just thought it was cool at the time. But he's doing really well, taking pictures, doing video. And what I kind of think is amazing about just getting back a little bit to this, it's kind of like people have to express themselves somehow. And so when we talk about the way they express their pain, sometimes it's just a simple note, no longer. It's like a poem. And I think the thing that I'm amazed with is if you take the time to listen to people, to watch, to experience what's happening, far beyond these kind of crazy headlines, the craziness of pointing the finger, of political expediency of Donald Trump saying, oh, Chicago's this, and everybody kind of saying, this is defining Chicago in the South Side in this very limited way by how people in extreme situations treat each other. And that's all, if you're a human being and you are in an extreme situation, you feel your life is threatened, or your family's life is threatened, or your best friends, someone you grew up with just got killed, what would you do? And you can't really go to the police in this context. So what would you do? And I think that's why I asked that question of Anthony. And what would you do? I mean, you think there's a way that you can change what's going on? Can you be the agent of change? He was like, they'll kill me. But I was saying, I said, I think you guys are the people who have to do it. Because I can't talk to a young guy and tell him, hey, man, put down your gun. I can't do that. Like, there's nobody going to listen to me. But someone like him, he puts down his gun. And it's interesting, as we talked, and we discussed some of this, he said he's coming to a new... he's like, when he doesn't use violence to solve his problems, he's like learning a new way as he gets a little bit older. So that's positive. I'm happy about that. This is on the Guggenheim. It's called the Guggenheim School. And this was the artwork that the young guys left behind, which I thought was pretty kind of both beautiful and sad. It's kind of like gun with an extended chalk drawings. Modern-day chalk drawings. This picture trips me out. I hadn't looked at it in a long time. But if we go through this, I took this in around 2005. And I haven't done this yet, but Ant is the guy right in the middle behind the dude putting up the signs. You could tell the times have changed, and it's an old picture because the clothes, right, are really different. Well, maybe some old heads rock the white t-shirt down in baggy pants. You'll see older dudes still dressing like that. But younger guys don't. But Ant, they got. If you go through this, Cory's dead. Brandon's doing well. He works at the oil shop. This guy just got killed. That's Ant's cousin. He's okay. Rico's locked up for 55 years for murder. And just piece by piece, I'm going to have Ant diagram this one because I feel like, man, I look at that. When we think about all the, look at that human potential in that picture. The energy. The energy. Being on the street with these dudes at that time was like, there was, that's just young energy nowhere to go. And that's like what's going on today. And so this is in 2006, 2005. And now, a generation later, there's still, you know, 12, 10 years later, Donald got killed, right? And it's just like, why? We don't want to do anything about it. And that's all I can say. We don't want to do anything. Chicago wants to figure out a way to continue to move more people out of the city. 300,000 African American people have left what is really one of the heartbeats of African American life in our country. And so in the last decade, almost 300,000 people have been, have left, either been physically displaced in public housing or made the conclusions. Priced out. It's getting too expensive. Made the conclusion, didn't want to deal with schools closing. Made the, how many different ways can you cut a loaf of bread, right? So people leave for a lot of reasons. But it is kind of funny that that many people have won, that many black folks feel that the city is not a place for them. A place that really was a destination for generations now. I think, you know, how can I say this? I think that it's going to take more than just waiting for our political leaders to someday just change their mind, right? Okay. And that's really how the U of C trauma center happened, right? Because people said, look, brother got killed, could have gone to the hospital if it was closer. He died, maybe he would have been saved. People got together and started protesting. And I think that's kind of what I want to talk a little bit more about. There's some of the people who really have inspired me right now in the protest movement in Chicago. So I'm going to talk about two young men and a couple of women who I've met. I'm going to talk about these folks because they live in my neighborhood, in our neighborhood. We live in the same neighborhood. My neighborhood is not my neighborhood. It's our neighborhood. And this picture was from the Dominics supermarket that closed on 71st and Jeffrey. Again, when we talk about sustainable communities, basic things really do matter. It's funny, I interviewed a guy and you think, oh, you go to the Dominics, you go to your local supermarket for food, I got to get my food. And a lot of people do it. And obviously that's the real reason. But I interviewed one of my friends about it. He said, man, that's where I used to get my flowers from my wife. You know, that's where I get my flowers. But you need obviously you go to the supermarket. And they closed it in 2013. There's still no supermarket in South Shore. South Shore is one of like biggest and most diverse class black, you know, diverse African-American communities in the city. It's a really, that's where I live. It's a great community. We don't have a supermarket today. Are you telling me there's no way to get a supermarket? You have elderly people who have to take the bus over to extra further, a lot further than a lot further than they should to go to the jewel. It's ridiculous. So this was the cashier the day that the last day I cashed out there. But anyways, I'm going to get back to Jedidiah. I just I've digressed. These are just images from the community. I put this picture up here because this was the first time I met Jedidiah Brown. You guys might know him. He's the guy who jumped on the stage, at the Trump rally. A lot of people have a lot of thoughts about him. But I remember just seeing the flashing lights one day. And I was like, what are the flashing lights at 71st and Jeffrey? And if I see flashing lights, I think, it's like a Thursday afternoon, man, I better go check it out, see what's going on in the neighborhood. Maybe take some pictures, show what's happening, put on Instagram or something. And it was Jedidiah, this guy, I didn't know who he was. And he was just had a bunch of coffins out on the street. And there was about three or four hundred people gathered in the middle of the afternoon on Thursday marching. I said to myself, wow, okay. And I was like, that guy's pretty cool. I thought, man, this is great. So we marched around the whole neighborhood, took a bunch of pictures, put them on Instagram and, you know, I introduced myself and then we just kind of, you know, went our separate ways. I went home. But that was in 2014. It was like a year before Laquan McDonald. And there was always been a long history of organizing, but like for a number of years, since in the 90s and early 2000s, there wasn't that much organizing that I was seeing amongst the young people, the really young people. 15, 16, 20, 25. I was used to organizers being 35, 38, 40. But that all changed. And I was just like, when Laquan McDonald happened, I was just kind of blown away by it. And I was kind of blown away because of the surge in organizing. And people like Kira Mul, she said, I saw her speak a few weeks ago, and she said a few months ago actually now, she said I had never done anything like that. I had never gone out on the street. I had never protested just seeing that changing. She felt like she needed to protest. When I went to Ferguson, that was also something really amazing. But to see it in Chicago in this way where people were now confronting the most powerful places Michigan Avenue shutting it down, that was something that we maybe people have seen, I'm sure in history things have been done, but that was a really cool moment. And I saw Jetta Dyer there too. No, not there, but that was another time. LeMond. You guys probably have known LeMond too. LeMond and Jetta Dyer living offshore, I run into him just all the time. So I started to say, let me take your pictures, man. And then a friend of mine was doing a LeMond was 16 at this point. Man, 16, he's up on the, you know, it's like, I asked him, how do you do that? Because when I was 16, I didn't have the wherewithal to get out there and to speak truth to power. That's what these guys are doing, man. And not just guys, obviously. Men, women, just amazing. It's just, so I started to I like the way he got up in the cops' faces. It was like really saying, hey, I'm going to confront you. And not touch you, but confront you. You can't, when LeMond did that, he was the only one who did it in that way. And I was like, who is this? Dude, who is this guy? And so I started to, you know, it's like you do a little dance. Because people don't really always want you to hang out with them at first. You have to get to know them. So I had like Jedadiah I started talking to him and then one day I saw they had been preaching at the quarry on 75th Street. So I call, I text them on Facebook. I'm like, where you guys at? They're like, I just went by the quarry to find you. We weren't there. They said, oh, we're at the tire shop. Come on over, you know. So we started talking. A friend of mine, Ben Austin was writing a piece about Jedadiah and his journey through his own personal pain, his identity of figuring out who he is as a man and his own sexuality. And also just how does he deal with trying to change the city that doesn't want to change? And so we just started talking and I like started hanging out. I'm like, what are you guys doing today? And they're like, oh, we're going here, we're going there, we're going here, we're going there. I'm like, can I tag along? That's what I did. I just went and rolled with them. And I still following them today. Here is the quarry brooks. And then they had an incident at the I love these guys because no matter what, they're going to call it out. Like they had an incident at Magianos, one of the pizza places on Michigan where they felt they had been discriminated against. So LeMond and Jedadiah just went down there and like grabbed signs, just the two of them grabbed signs, went on Facebook live and are like, this is BS and they talked to the manager and like shouting and just kind of like they just started walking through the restaurant and doing their own personal protest. And I was like, man that takes courage. And that's the thing like, I think this lack of courage and maybe that's why I'm inspired by just that simple act when you say truth to power I don't know if this is power, but it's definitely getting out of the usual places where you protest and it's getting down into you know, Michigan South Michigan and people are looking and I'm like, why are they doing this? And I wasn't really totally convinced that that moment was like such an important moment to protest but for those guys, that day it was. And I think that's really what separates the people who stand up in difficult times and speak out from the people who are kind of quiet and shy away. It's those people who basically take a stand on the days when they're not really sure. They don't really know for sure if it's the right thing. They just know that something wasn't right that they felt discriminated against and they wanted to talk to the manager and tell them what they thought about it and they did. The manager came out and was pissed because the manager felt like I employ a diverse group of people and I'm good to my workers and man, they got into it and talking and talking. He called the police and called the police and called the police time and Howard went by the police. The police weren't coming for two guys holding signs in this restaurant. They had other stuff to do so basically at the end of it they just said their piece and eventually they just left. But Jed does that a lot. He'll just go to a 7-Eleven if someone feels that someone has been discriminated and he'll just show up by himself and be like this is BS. And so for like two weeks in September I also followed these guys on the Kenneke Jenkins case out in Rosemont and I'm working on a film to incorporate that. This was a fight they had between a couple other activists and that's, you know, we like to think it's all hunky-dory. It's real. It's real. There's a lot of tension that comes out. People scrap it out. These guys aren't really afraid to mix it up. This is when I went with an operation push with Jesse. I think it's actually quite interesting kind of a mix of a bit of preaching and I don't know. It's been pretty cool work with him. And he really is interested, he and LeMond are interested. Their fight is to bring justice and attention to what's going on in Chicago but not just in Chicago but all over the country. I'd like to show you guys a movie and I'd like to plug in the computer so that it doesn't die. Does anyone have any questions at this point? Yes, sir. Yes. Yes. Jeff versus $100 billion is a fortune, Bill Gates. I mean this is for sure poverty. But poverty doesn't justify violence at this level. They have no gun factory. What did they like so much? What did they kill each other? Something else here. I had the opportunity to really coach a baseball team. I didn't know anything about baseball. Southside. No male. Only kids left by themselves. So this is some kind of family structure here. Early pregnancy for girls, dropping out of school and some segregation for sure. Now, when you say people don't care about this, I can laugh. I got scared many times by myself among these kids. It could be dangerous. Things are out of control. Now, I don't think there's a single solution to fix this. There's something that the first tool they use to kill a gun. The guns are legal. Second amendment. So, I'm not going to say that anybody is to blame for this because apparently they're quick to blame other people. Yeah, but they can do a lot. Jesse Jackson can be doing a lot. What do they do? Obama was President of the United States. What did he do? What did he do? And he's from here. Because I solved problems myself. I raised my brother and sisters. I'm raising kids in France. So, I'm saying that to think there are solutions who come from other people. You've got to come from themselves. And I think a lot of people are, you know, and I think that's what a lot of people... I'm sorry, one aspect. You show this young man facing a poor cop who didn't do anything to him. I didn't like it. I didn't like it. It was just a necessary confrontation. I mean, personally, I remember this picture. I mean, the cop is there doing a job. He has kids. He has a family. He's going downtown to disturb, prevent people from shopping to come from Indiana and family. I mean, it's really to spread... I mean, that's a personal point of view. Oh, yeah, a lot of people didn't agree with that. But I personally thought it was an interesting and important moment in our city's history. And also an important moment where people were going out... You know, you can march around your neighborhood all day, all year, all, you know, forever. But when you take it out of the neighborhood and you start going to places, like you said, people from Indiana shopping, then they're like, oh, what's going on? And you saw people talking who wouldn't normally talk, right? So that person from Indiana would say, what are you guys doing? Why are you guys doing this? And then they would tell. And then there would be these conversations. And I think that's the thing that's missed when you have those opportunities, when people do take the step outside or just take the step to speak their truth. And so I'm really impressed with folks. Okay, we'll do that. I'd like to show a film, an experimental film that I've been working, that I, it's really kind of just work in progress. And it's kind of a combination of I don't have a title for it yet, but it's a combination of the video work that I've been doing with some of the work with the young guys. And it's just a bit of trying to explain or show my experience of what it's like being in the neighborhood and going on this journey. So why don't we watch it? So, wow. I'm not often speechless, but I often look at this and can honestly say how foreign it is to so many people's lives. And as someone who actually is in this space of fear of bit in my professional life, there are moments that I see incredible assets around the issue of resilience and how despite challenging situations people find ways to still laugh and love and connect. But then the other side of it, the challenge of how can people be so resilient in the face of such great adversity. My question, that's a statement, but my question is how did you develop enough how did you develop enough of a relationship with some of the young men in particular you've known for a while? I often think to get into this space requires intense trust that one can only build over time and never fail the other. So how do you do that? Man, that's a really challenging question, but the way that I built trust with these guys was since they were kids because I knew them when they were you know, the shorties in the neighborhood and I was like the teacher, but also like the photographer in the neighborhood but I also like you said I never like they'll say today, you never ratted us out. I came to them on their terms in the neighborhood in the school was a different story because in the school I was the teacher and I told them like if there was something going on I mean I would still pull them aside in the neighborhood if I thought I saw something that was wrong but ultimately that's their home that's your home, I don't it wasn't like my place to tell them how to act this is your home and so that was in 2001, 2002, 2003 2004, 2005 and like I've been out in the neighborhood ever since so there'll be something happening and I'll run into you know, we talk about like oh man, remember that time I just saw you and Les and Lester got locked up a while ago and that's like his very close friend so that's like brother so when he got locked up like just the pictures of him, that means and so when I took that picture those things are meaningful and again this year when I reconnected with Ant it's really a hard project because it's just been hard trying to figure out how to start to tell his story and tell the story of what's going on with these guys but this was sort of an experiment of something and we just started talking and he just seemed really sad like he just really it's kind of strange he's this dude is very brave but also like really sensitive but also like rock hard and so it's kind of a challenge but we just ran into each other at the corner at the gas station in the pocket on the south Chicago and I we were just talking and he was like hey man I want to talk to you so we started talking and then he's like wanted some pictures so I took some pictures and we just started talking and all summer I was rolling with him and then all the other guys who I knew are there too but I started to put the film together another part of this film and it just not there yet but this was something that I kind of just worked on with my assistant and this really came out of a place of the trust but also seeing the social media impact of how much we are taking in and how much is being documented by the police by myself by the young people and by people in general and it's amazing what we're witnessing and what is going on in our neighborhood that we see and we don't see like I got into the car one day he's like man look at this and he someone hit videotape someone get that I don't know if you guys caught it there's a picture of a guy getting shot in the head I'm like man stuff is like what's on what we are documenting and so it's like that's such a change like when I used to you know be in the neighborhood and walk on the block with my camera people were not happy now it's like everybody has a camera and so we're all taking these making these stories and telling our truths and walking through the world and creating our own you know realities like I don't know who that guy Bill Tolly is he's right all the video comes from the south right in our neighborhood like that's right down the street but I love these like God bless America or whatever and he gets on the bus and he's inviting you know these other guys you know he's jumping on this you know he's in a conflict and it's like that little so I don't love the conflict but way people are expressing that's why I include some of the different stuff but that's how I've been and it's really hard not to let people down because sometimes they ask things you know that are challenging and also it's difficult like staying in that space because like it's not you know these guys are you know they're still on the street they're not in the street street like they're not hanging out on the corner they're not hanging out in the park much anymore because they don't really go to the park they don't really walk down the street these guys won't go two blocks we go to the car you gotta have your keys ready we gotta get to the car because he's really worried about getting killed and it's not like abstracting every move is completely planned to the like very planned like when he moves it's very like you know he knows who he's going with and it's really interesting I didn't realize that part of it and there was a surprise I didn't realize hey how's it going? to think about your status as a witness in company with somebody who's so afraid for his life acknowledges this kind of protection or status or privilege that you have if you're able to drive around somebody who's afraid of getting shot or walk down the street with somebody who's afraid of getting shot and it's really interesting because I mean you and I live in the same neighborhood and I think contextualizing our experiences as minorities in our community no matter what our relationships with our neighbors are it's strange for us to say we live in a food desert but somehow the weight of that is slightly different because of what we may have access to and I've always had this intention in my own feeling about your work about whether or not there's a potential for a fetishizing element or a voyeuristic element and it's something that I hope you can talk more about oh for sure that is a definite truth that he felt protected if I'm driving you know like if I'm driving the car and we're going somewhere he's like they're more likely to hurt to shoot at me so that's you're right and in terms of fetishizing yeah we really thought about I've been thinking I always think about that and it's a really challenging question I mean the music it's a really challenging question the images of young black men with guns posing the way that I dealt I deal with that with this piece is that I'm trying to make that is a reality that we do see a lot of but you rarely see it in the context of all these other things going on like family and love and hate and killing and police and abandoned stores and the food desert and the school and so that's why it's like when I think about what I witness what I see and how I perceive the neighborhood it's super complex and my relationship to it is really fraught with tension at times because I'm like you know it's frustrating sometimes you know being white being in a black neighborhood you know documenting of course that's like a very basic tension that's been there all along and it still exists every time I pick up the camera every time I represent it so it's not it's never going to be resolved but I do try to work on it and I'd like feedback if anybody not that I didn't say anything it's just that I met them on their terms I met them in there in the fact that this is your home and if I'm the type of no it what I'm talking about when I was in the school and like at this point like you know like that's a grown man who I'm talking to and I'll say like I'll talk to these guys I'm like you guys can be the change you guys are the ones who can actually negotiate these things you guys are the ones who know what's going on but it's like you're talking to you know in Ant's case he's just trying to survive right now he's trying to find a way to grow up and have a sustainable life that is not um and that's just really challenging because he's like kind of stuck in a really difficult place with a lot of pain just feelings of um I don't know that's what I'm trying to understand yeah thanks my name is Elias and I know you we went to a long time ago a long time ago good stuff it was wonderful to see I came here late but I did see the movie and the movie really moved me actually quite a bit there was a lot of things going on one was just the a lot of stimulus going on you have 16 different videos going on at the same time it was like there's just so much going on but then when you went to the cold scenes and I was thinking where does it all go when it gets so cold does everybody just stay inside and that was one of the questions I have is do you see the difference in the weather the activity as far as the violence in these neighborhoods that's my first question and the second one is if we're talking about the generations I really saw just a lot of young men and just a lot of young people are the older generations are they where are they what are they doing in the neighborhoods and that was my second question and I guess it's true okay so in terms of the screens also this is meant to be an installation like I'm showing it this way but the way I'd like I've installed it before only one place but we're on like large screens in the room so you walk into a dark room and you get to spend time with it but I think it's cool to show it this way in terms of where was older generation I think that's part of the point is like there's a generation disconnect so this is really about younger people and 20, 30 and below and kind of what's going on and how yeah so I'm not I could see that adding something about that more imagery of that but so far just kind of that space of like when you were 25 you weren't thinking about your dad you know and his buddies you know you were just living your life when you were 15 you were just like trying to do your thing you know so it's more that way and I do think there's a real significant disconnect between the older generation and the younger generation and they feel especially among some activists that I've spoken with feel that there's been a real that they've been failed yeah and the weather obviously there's more violence in the summer less in the winter but that doesn't stop you know there's always things happening well when it's cold it's like if you have relationships with people you just go hang them down you know what I mean and you know or I go and do those cold landscapes like they were in the middle there's all kinds of stuff going on but it's okay thanks so much for this I almost feel guilty reacting to the beauty of the Polaroids and you know as much as to the content but anyway this kind of relates to the missing older generation the other thing that's missing here is women and I understand that this is a question of both gender and access I doubt that you would have access to women in the same way that you had to young men here so I wonder what you think about that you know when I think of the trauma center coalition for example the activists young activists who are so effective in getting this lots of female leadership in that yes and so I wondered number one if you think you could get the kind of access to women as as independent agents and not just as girlfriends or ancillary roles the way we see them here and number two if not if you are maybe in your educational efforts trying to train women to come up to do that sort of work yeah I think it's a very valid and good point and I think that when we put it together it's interesting we looked at it and we're like wow it's not really like you say it's as much in this one but yeah I think I definitely could get access it's just kind of like these are the guys who people who gravitated towards me and at the same time you know I have mentored young women in the neighborhood too and it's just I don't know I guess they didn't invite me into that space the same way and but I do think it's a really I've been thinking about that a lot actually I think it's a very very good point and I think I need to take that because we were talking about it afterwards and my assistant showed it to one of his friends and he said the same thing it's almost like a you know and at the same time I think part of it is that I see these guys as the the guys are also being in the middle of it but I can't disagree with you on that Evelyn Johnson aka Mama Solution I'm here to represent the older generation we are very much out here just in smaller sectors and you do correct behavior but it's on the level of your involvement that you are allowed to do that and what the sincerity that those young people in the streets see you and I know that there are women out here because I train them to come out to do work out women are very visible in our community doing different things on many different levels I can't disagree with you at all and that's you just didn't represent us well what's up I can't disagree on that I'm gonna have to come get you and let you hang out on the street with me sometime alright that sounds good I think I failed in that area there used to be at least quite a documentary photography program at the Illinois Institute of Technology do you ever have any interactions with them or their instructors things like that would maybe structure the images better or more consistently or I haven't worked with them in what way are you referring to in terms of that my limited knowledge of it it was much more of a formal social science oriented program for using photographs to diagnose social problems ok ok no I haven't been involved with them thank you thank you