John White: Portrait of Black Chicago

From June through October 1973 and briefly during the spring of 1974, John H. White, a 28-year-old photographer with the Chicago Daily News, worked for the federal government photographing Chicago, especially the city`s African American community. White took his photographs for the Environmental Protection Agency`s (EPA) DOCUMERICA project. As White reflected recently, he saw his assignment as an opportunity to capture a slice of life, to capture history. His photographs portray the difficult circumstances faced by many of Chicago`s African American residents in the early 1970s, but they also catch the spirit, love, zeal, pride, and hopes of the community.

Today, John White is a staff photographer with the Chicago Sun-Times. He has won hundreds of awards, and his work has been exhibited and published widely. In 1982 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography.

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