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Roosevelt University’s Gage Gallery Exhibit to Highlight Golden Age of Photography at Chicago Reader


Reader exhibit

CHICAGO–(ENEWSPF)–May 26, 2015.  For more than 30 years, the Chicago Reader was a trailblazer and signature example of the kind of creative freedom in both photography and design that alternative weekly newspapers all over the country came to embrace and showcase.

Now, in a new exhibit that runs from June 4 through Aug. 28 at Roosevelt University’s Gage Gallery, the public can experience what the golden age of photography and design once was like at one of the nation’s leading alternative weeklies, the Chicago Reader.

“This is a show about Chicago and Chicagoans being presented in a way that traditional newspapers have never offered,” said Tyra Robertson, curator of Chicago Reader in Black & White.  “The sadness of the show is that this is a genre that no longer exists,” she said.

Featuring 80 black-and-white photographs taken between 1971 and 2004 by more than a dozen photographers who were freelancers for the Chicago Reader during its golden age, the exhibit is the largest group photo show ever presented at Gage.

There will be an opening night reception for the show, which is expected to be a reunion of sorts for former Chicago Reader freelance photographers and others, beginning at 5 p.m. on Thursday, June 4, at Roosevelt’s Gage Gallery, 18 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.

The show offers an artistic slice-of-life look at Chicago and Chicagoans, including Barack Obama during his first run as Illinois state senator, Tom Waits and others. It is told through the lens of a publication that got its start in a Minnesota apartment when friends just out of college, including founders Bob McCamant and Bob Roth, decided to paint outside the lines of mainstream news.  Known for lengthy but newsworthy pieces, the paper’s hallmark was large images and a fluid offbeat design, which took shape based on images that were shot and selected by freelance photographers.

More than just a photo exhibit, Chicago Reader in Black & White features famous layouts from the alternative weekly including “Faces of AIDS,” which was an in-depth, four-page look at AIDS hospice care in Chicago at the height of the AIDS crisis. A short documentary with the views of 14 former freelance Chicago Reader photographers also is part of the exhibit.

“They talk about what things were like at the Chicago Reader and how the paper transitioned,” said Robertson, who interviewed many Reader freelance photographers, including Lloyd DeGrane, Ron Gordon, Paul Natkin, Marc PoKempner, Jon Randolph and John Sundlof, among others.
 
“With this exhibit, there is a sense of history of the Reader and the important role that alternative weeklies have played in presenting the news,” she said. “What is also evident is that the experience of working for the Reader at the time period was unmatched compared to any other assignment these photographers have had, before or since.”

The exhibit is the final installation in Gage Gallery’s yearlong Above the Fold: 10 Decades of Chicago Photojournalism series that is sponsored by Roosevelt’s College of Arts and Sciences and made possible by the generosity of donor Susan Rubnitz. Free and open to the public, Gage Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays.  For information, call 312-341-6458 or visit www.roosevelt.edu/gagegallery.

Source: www.roosevelt.edu

 


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