spunky girl reporter exploring Chicago's public housing
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A young resident of Ida B. Wells peeks out of a stairwell to examine a loud noise on the street in 2006. Photo by David Schalliol
Note: This is the first in a series about great photographers capturing Chicago's public housing.
One of the reasons David Schalliol takes pictures of public housing is that he wants people to actually see it.
So few people, he says, actually come into contact with the housing or the people that live there.
"Documentation is critical because most people's routines never even
take them near a public housing project, so sharing all types of
media is critical to improve our understanding of different living
situations and the institutional decisions that influence them," says Schalliol, a PhD student at the University of Chicago.
Also known as metroblossom on flickr, Schalliol is interested in social stratification - how people come to be separated and ranked within society according to factors like race, class and occupation.
He takes pictures because he wants to get people talking about it.
"[I like] knowing that I am contributing to the discourse about it -- that I can
feature particularly problematic or fascinating aspects of public
housing and hopefully complicate some conceptions about it," says Schalliol.
One
of his favorite photos is of Cabrini Food Mart, a small store flanked
on either side the new mixed-income housing. The store, which is now
closed, is a physical manifestation of the tensions in the community -
new right next to old, both rubbing each other the wrong way.
"More than a few new residents complained about it and those who shopped
there. Of course, there's another side to that story too ... with
equally strong feelings," says Schalliol.
So
many of his photographs are startlingly personal and up-close, which is
something he seems to value, but also a little wary of. He's always
wanted to get the photo of a community on a typical summer evening -
people out, talking, laughing on the street around their buildings -
but has never felt quite close enough to any one community to capture
it.
A
young resident of one of the remaining Cabrini Green white buildings
looks east to the surprisingly close Magnificent Mile in 2007. Photo by
David Schalliol
"I think the most challenging thing about taking photographs of public
housing is being respectful of public housing residents," Schalliol says. "Photographs
of people who have been marginalized often tread very close to
exploitation."
But
the Plan for Transformation, Chicago's long-term project to redevelop
its entire public housing stock, means its important to document what's
going on - what was there, what is there now and how it's all changed.
South
Side residents play basketball on the former Stateway Gardens courts as
the final building of the project is demolished in 2007
"I think it is important to document these massive governmental programs
and the lives of people who live with them," he says. "There's an
urgency to document the last vestiges of an era and the beginnings of
another."
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