In his 1951 book Chicago: City on the Make, Nelson Algren offered bittersweet praise for the city: “Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.” This unique character—fraught with affection, tension, and contradiction—is revealed in the work of the many photographers and filmmakers who documented Chicago in the second half of the 20th century as cultural, social, and political events transformed the city. These artists focused on Chicago’s history as a city of neighborhoods, many of them fiercely segregated and separated from one another. Together, they constructed a portrait of Chicago that speaks equally to its allure and its haunting brutality.

Drawn largely from the Art Institute’s collection, this exhibition highlights the work of artists who through their images and films captured the life of their own communities or those to which they were granted intimate access as outsiders. Featured among them is a network of photographers who focused on Chicago’s South Side during a period coinciding with the emergence of the city’s Black Arts Movement. These include works by Billy Abernathy, Darryl Cowherd, Bob Crawford, Roy Lewis, and Robert A. Sengstacke produced in connection with the revolutionary Bronzeville mural, the Wall of Respect (1967–71). Other projects, such as Mikki Ferrill’s decade-long documentation of an improvised South Side club, The Garage (1970/80), and two of Gordon Parks’s Life magazine assignments (1953 and 1963), likewise underscore the role played by Chicago as a national center of black culture and politics.