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Shortly before the end of the second world war Wayne Miller was awarded a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation to photograph "The Way of Life of the Northern Negro". A new book of these photographs entitled Chicago's South Side, 1946-1948 has just been published, and the vintage photographs will be shown at the Lee Gallery in March and April.
A large number of African Americans had migrated from the South to the North during the war, and Miller focused on the African American community of his hometown on the South Side of Chicago. Wayne Miller was eager to create photographs that would depict what he refers to as "universal truths" in order to help people of all races come together and see that we are not all that different. He once said, "we may differ in race, color, language, wealth, and politics. But look at what we all have in common - dreams, laughter, tears, pride, the comfort of home, the hunger for love".
Throughout this body of work Wayne Millerclearly portrays all of these qualities through his moving and poignant images. In the faces of his subjects one gets a sense of fear, despair, joy and hope. From the photographs of patrons laughing and dancing at the 45th Street bar to a jubilant bride after her wedding, Wayne Miller captures moments of happiness in a community often encumbered by hard times. Along with these images of hope and joy there are also the ones that reflect the worries and troubles of individuals in their daily lives. Images, such as the photograph of a wife holding the family's bills and the husband sits with a drink in his hand, or the image in which a mother stands with her back to the camera as she looks out of a window and wonders how she is going to support her newborn alone.
These black and white images of the South Side of Chicago from 50 years ago tell a story of everyday life within a tight knit community. Through his photographs Wayne Miller brings the viewer into the lives of his subjects in hopes of portraying the simple fact that then, as well as now, we all have the same needs, desires, hopes and dreams.
Wayne Miller was a member of Edward Steichen's World War II U.S. Navy Combat Photo Unit, an associate curator for the famous The Family of Man exhibit and book at New York's Museum of Modern Art, a contract photographer for Life magazine, and a member and former president of Magnum Photos. He also coauthored Baby's First Year with Dr. Spock, and authored The World is Young.
Bibliography:
- Stephen Daiter Gallery, Light and Vision: Photography at the School of Design in Chicago, 1937-1952, Chicago, IL: Stephen Daiter Photography, 1994.
- Carol Ehlers, Chicago Photographs, Chicago, IL: LaSalle Bank Photography Collection, 2004.
- Ken Light, Ann wilkes Tucker., Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.
- William Manchester, Jean Lacouture, Fred Ritchin, In Our Time: The World as Seen by Magnum Photographers, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.
- Jerry Mason, ed., ASMP Picture Annual, New York: Ridge Press, 1957.
- Wayne F. Miller, Orville Schell, Gordon Parks, Chicago's South Side, 1946-1948, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000.
- Judy Norrell, Common Ground: Discovering Community in 150 Years of Art, New York: Merrell, 2004.
- Christopher Phillips, Steichen at War, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1981.
- David Travis and Elizabeth Siegel, Taken by Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937-1971, Chicago, IL: Art Institute of Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002.
- Ricardo Viera, Lou Stoumen, Intentions and techniques: Photographs from the Lehigh University Collection, Eden Prairie, MN: Metro Printing, 1979.
Member of The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD)
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