Life After Death in Chicago
by Carlos Javier Ortiz
The killing of a high #school honors student and majorette who had participated in President Obama’s inaugural parade earlier this year elicited national outrage. Granted, some people who had been following gun violence against young people in Chicago wondered where the outrage was when other teenage boys were murdered.
“If it was a 17-year-old boy, it probably would not have gotten as much attention, but you can’t really push it that way with a little girl,” said Carlos #Javier_Ortiz, a #documentary photographer in Chicago. “You hear it on the news, and we have these assumptions about people, thinking everything is gang related, but it’s not. The thing is, I’m trying to go beyond the headlines and show these are real people.”
Indeed, when Hadiya Pendleton was killed, Mr. Ortiz was already into his seventh year documenting how violence affected families, primarily in Chicago, where he was raised and now lives. From the sidewalk memorials and the anti-violence rallies to the homes left broken or the wounded trying to recover, he was there. After an October workshop sequencing and editing his images at Red Hook Editions, he is now preparing a book and has started a #Kickstarter campaign to raise $10,000 to finance its publication. (A 2011 campaign, as well as exhibitions, allowed him to pursue the project and produce video.)
The book’s title, “We All We Got,” is a nod to a theme running throughout the work.
▻http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/life-after-death-in-chicago/?smid=tw-share #photo #NYT #US #Violence #chicago #doc