The neighborhoods that make up Chicago’s south side—Auburn Gresham, Bronzeville, Englewood, Hyde Park, Kenwood, South Shore, Woodlawn, Washington Park, and so forth—are layered and complex.
In this feature, I wanted to exhibit these communities individually in the course of providing a collective portrayal of the south side. However, in browsing the Sun-Times archive, I noticed that location of many of the photographs was recorded simply as “the south side,” with no indication of the specific community depicted.
And due to myriad factors, such as the changing landscape and the limits of my own experience (I migrated to Chicago just over 15 years ago), it became a challenge to pair the images with their corresponding neighborhoods. The only clues are