CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/3/2018

1940s Black Chicago in 'A Vision Shared'

Russell Lee's April 1941 photograph—simply captioned "In front of the movie theater, Chicago"—is reproduced from A Vision Shared: A Portrait of America 1935–1943, Hank O'Neal's collection of FSA documentary photographs by John Collier, Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Theo Jung, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, John Vachon and Marion Post Wolcott. "There was very little emphasis on big-city life in the program," O'Neal writes. "His photographs show blacks in Chicago going about their business on a daily basis and, more important, enjoying their leisure time. He also worked inside the people's homes, often documenting less than adequate living conditions. Except for Carl Mydans in Cincinnati, there is nothing in the file that shows this side of life in the United States."