Chicago exhibition features preserved photographs that celebrate a community’s history

Reflecting on her experience as organizer of the archive, CatchLight Local Fellow, Samantha Friend Cabrera, writes:

“Everyone begins their day full of past memories, experiences, emotions and thoughts. … We carry around a mind full of memories. This shapes our scope of the world. This project was developed out of people speaking to these memories and showing me where they live.”

Annette Britton, a contributor to the archive, shared her perspective as a longtime, intergenerational resident:

“I love the fact that people have lived here for generations, and I just wish that’s the conversation people were having. Let’s have that conversation. Then we can find how we connect to the larger city, as opposed to, you know, buying into the media hype that, ‘Oh, we live in the ghetto, we live in the hood.’ Those conversations, I think, thwart the voices of people who feel very differently.”

The family of archive contributor, Gina Jamison, came to East Garfield Park from North Carolina in 1947, when her grandfather purchased land in the neighborhood. Her childhood home was an important first stop for incoming relatives migrating from the South, though the house was demolished in 1988.

Now on that site, Jamison tends the Kuumba Tre-Ahm Community Garden, along with her daughter and granddaughters. “People were so engaged with their neighbors. That’s what I really want to see again,” she says.

This exhibition is a collaboration between the CatchLight Local Visual Desk, led by CatchLight Local Fellow Samantha Friend Cabrera, in collaboration with the Garfield Park Conservatory. The project was originally produced and published in partnership with the CatchLight Local Visual Desk, ProPublica, and the Institute for Nonprofit News, and made possible with generous support from the Kresge Foundation, McCormick Foundation and PhotoWings.