“Two Years and Five Months After the Start of the COVID-19 Pandemic”

This summer, MacArthur Fellow Camilo José Vergara reached out to us. Renowned for documenting change in Northern industrial cities over the last four decades, and more recently the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communities of color in the New York area, he passed through the Chicago area to do the same:

“I was just in Chicago for a week updating my documentation of Chicagoland, looking for signs of COVID-19 and staring at Lake Michigan at sunset. I think that it is important to say that these photos were taken two years and five months after the start of the pandemic.”

“In Gary, and the village of Ford Heights, it was as if the pandemic never happened.”

Check out the images he took. As he is sure to do, we look forward to seeing how he chronicles how these neighborhoods change over time:

Masked Black faces, Austin Peoples Action Center, 5139 West Lake St., Chicago, August 2022.

Walk up clinic, Community Outreach van, University of Illinois Circle, West Van Boren St.and Pulaski Rd., Chicago, August 2022.

Billboard, West Lake. St. and Kildare Ave., Chicago, August 2022.

Detail, Whitney Young Branch, Chicago Public Library, 415 East 79th St., Chicago, August 2022.

Walk up clinic, Community Outreach van, University of Illinois Circle, West Van Boren St.and Pulaski Rd., Chicago, August 2022.

Friendship Baptist Church, Jackson at Laramie Ave. August 2022.