In Fader Magazine’s annual photography issue, they usually showcase multiple essays from different photographers.
But this year, all of that space went to Daniel Shea’s photo essay on Chicago, and rightfully so.
According to Fader:
Last year, Shea photographed our cover story on Chicago’s drill scene, focusing on the young rapper Chief Keef and members of his local-clique-cum-record-label Glory Boyz. Now, returning for a month to the same neighborhoods, Shea looks at the city’s South Side from the perspective of teenagers whose careers haven’t spirited them away from their home blocks.
But Shea’s collection of photos was much more than that. It paints a picture beyond the guns and bloodshed we’ve seen in the media.
He highlights the families that struggle with that grief, the neighborhoods that these young people try to escape, and the complexity of those crimes…the pervasive violence in Chicago.
As Shea puts it:
This essay is about real people with real lives, a way to understand where the hyperbolic stuff in the lyrics is actually coming from.
Right now in Chicago is not a good time. A lot of the young people call it Chiraq. Innocent people are dying. For the general public, it’s easy to just say, “Chicago is violent. We need to stop getting guns in the hands of violent people, we need to lock people up.” I wish people would be more open to thinking about the complexity of the violence. The memorial walk I photographed was for a six-month-old baby. I haven’t been sleeping well, because I’ve got all this anxiety about this story—there’s too much to cover and I’m feeling overwhelmed. That’s a larger crisis about doing this kind of work: you go in quickly and leave. I think this essay will cover the bases, but I’m hoping it’s just a proposal to viewers to consider these issues more.
To check out the rest of Shea’s compelling photo essay, click here.
SOURCE: TheFader
