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Chicago's Nelson Algren
They met in 1949 when Art was a reporter for Life. Shay followed Algren around with a camera, gathering pictures for a photo-essay piece he was pitching to the magazine. Life didn’t pick up the article, but Shay and Algren became fast friends. Algren gave Shay’s camera entrance into the back-alley world of Division Street, and Shay captured Algren’s poetry on film. They were masters chronicling the same patch of ground with different tools.
Chicago’s Nelson Algren is the compilation of hundreds of photos—many recently discovered and published here for the first time—of Nelson Algren over the course of a decade and a deeply moving homage to the writer and his city. Read Algren and you’ll see Shay’s pictures; look at Shay’s photos and you’ll hear Nelson’s words.
Chicago’s Nelson Algren is the compilation of hundreds of photos—many recently discovered and published here for the first time—of Nelson Algren over the course of a decade and a deeply moving homage to the writer and his city. Read Algren and you’ll see Shay’s pictures; look at Shay’s photos and you’ll hear Nelson’s words.
- GenresPhotographyNonfiction
208 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2007
45 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 1, 2016
I read this first a couple years ago, (October 2014), though I was aware as a midwesterner of many of these pics always; they were in galleries, newspapers, and so on. I have it home again to look at as I plan to read some Algren this summer. And I am trying to read everything I can get my hands on by Algren's decades-long buddy and photojournalist Shay, too. Sets the tone a bit for the reading AND they are classic urban Chicago photographs. I live in Chicago; I'm a person of a certain age who grew up with gritty socially conscious black and white photography. And that kind of writing, too, in Algren.
Unfortunately at this very moment the cool cover photograph is not visible. But inside there are many photos of Algren in his various haunts, and some of just those haunts. Street scenes, bars. Some of the Simone de Beauvoir photos are here, too. Scandalous! A French Feminist philosopher (The Second Sex, which I read for important information when I was in my late teens) who has a wild affair with the hard-boiled profane American male writer! News flash! Read all about it! Algren and "Frenchie" were two of the main subjects that made Shay famous in and out of Chicago. But that's just a kind of outlier in Algren's and Shay's experience. Most of this is economically disadvantaged street photography, photojournalism.
Shay writes the (profane, fun) intro for his collection, very chatty, as if one one should be in a bar while looking at the book. He likes to put in rave reviews of Algren and his own photography, too, which is only slightly annoying. American myth-making. And ego. But you forgive him, finally, because the photos are really that good. Working class photography, for the most part, except when Simone comes to town. :)
Here's a lot of photos from the book, worth at the very least skimming.
https://www.google.com/search?q=art+s...
Unfortunately at this very moment the cool cover photograph is not visible. But inside there are many photos of Algren in his various haunts, and some of just those haunts. Street scenes, bars. Some of the Simone de Beauvoir photos are here, too. Scandalous! A French Feminist philosopher (The Second Sex, which I read for important information when I was in my late teens) who has a wild affair with the hard-boiled profane American male writer! News flash! Read all about it! Algren and "Frenchie" were two of the main subjects that made Shay famous in and out of Chicago. But that's just a kind of outlier in Algren's and Shay's experience. Most of this is economically disadvantaged street photography, photojournalism.
Shay writes the (profane, fun) intro for his collection, very chatty, as if one one should be in a bar while looking at the book. He likes to put in rave reviews of Algren and his own photography, too, which is only slightly annoying. American myth-making. And ego. But you forgive him, finally, because the photos are really that good. Working class photography, for the most part, except when Simone comes to town. :)
Here's a lot of photos from the book, worth at the very least skimming.
https://www.google.com/search?q=art+s...
July 17, 2021
Have you ever wanted to bum around 1950s Chicago dive bars and City Missions, dressed in a Salvation Army suit like the Blues Brothers, hanging out with some of the coolest people 1950s American counterculture had to offer? Of course you have. So did photojournalist Art Shay, who took this collection of photographs featuring not only Nelson Algren, but Simone de Beauvoir, Marcel Marceau (?!), Studs Terkel, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Mickey Mantle, Fred Hampton's bullet-riddled apartment, and countless assorted winos, boxers, sex workers, junkies, crooked beat cops &c. Algren, one of the great lyricists of his or any other time, provides narration and a nearly endless parade of quips and anecdotes, while Shay relates their experiences and the city that he's depicted so wonderfully, to Algren's life and literary career.
July 17, 2018
Being that Damen and Division was my adult reintroduction to Chicago, it was interesting to see how much things have changed (and in some ways, have not changed) since Algren’s years in pictures. As a fan of Algren’s work, this was an interesting, different view into his life. (Really, it’s like imagining that Algren had an Instagram account: these pictures function much the same way.)
November 14, 2008
Chicago’s Nelson Algren
photographs and text by Art Shay, with a foreword by David Mamet (Seven Stories Press) 978-1-58322-764-0
In 1950, The Nation Book Award presented its first awards, and The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren was the winner in the fiction category. The novel tells the story of a WWII vet with a heroin addiction who discovered a talent for dealing cards while in the service. Just before the award, Life magazine staff reporter Art Shay pitched a story and won an assignment to follow the writer around his South Side Chicago neighborhood. Although Life dropped the piece (drug addiction is a hard sell), and a book with Doubleday dried up as well, the photographer and the writer remained friends.
The photos, taken with a Rolleiflex and a Leica, follow Algren on his Schwinn, peeking in windows, hamming with friend Marcel Marceau, listening to housewifely complaints, contemplating an afternoon party girl, speaking with lover Simone de Beauvoir (yes, she was married to Sartre). While he was at it, Shay snapped photos of waitresses, children, coffee breaks, and bullet holes with equal measures of irony and joie de vivre. Sixty years ago, Algren wrote an introduction for this book that was never made titled, If You Don’t Like These Pictures, Get Your Own Damned Camera. Don’t miss this wonderful book, and be sure to read the captions.
Seven Stories also publishes most of Algren’s once out-of-print work.
photographs and text by Art Shay, with a foreword by David Mamet (Seven Stories Press) 978-1-58322-764-0
In 1950, The Nation Book Award presented its first awards, and The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren was the winner in the fiction category. The novel tells the story of a WWII vet with a heroin addiction who discovered a talent for dealing cards while in the service. Just before the award, Life magazine staff reporter Art Shay pitched a story and won an assignment to follow the writer around his South Side Chicago neighborhood. Although Life dropped the piece (drug addiction is a hard sell), and a book with Doubleday dried up as well, the photographer and the writer remained friends.
The photos, taken with a Rolleiflex and a Leica, follow Algren on his Schwinn, peeking in windows, hamming with friend Marcel Marceau, listening to housewifely complaints, contemplating an afternoon party girl, speaking with lover Simone de Beauvoir (yes, she was married to Sartre). While he was at it, Shay snapped photos of waitresses, children, coffee breaks, and bullet holes with equal measures of irony and joie de vivre. Sixty years ago, Algren wrote an introduction for this book that was never made titled, If You Don’t Like These Pictures, Get Your Own Damned Camera. Don’t miss this wonderful book, and be sure to read the captions.
Seven Stories also publishes most of Algren’s once out-of-print work.
March 3, 2020
Few novelists have captured the gritty essence of Chicago better than Nelson Algren (1909-1981), author of "The Man with the Golden Arm" and "A Walk on the Wild Side." And no photographer has captured Algren's love affair with the dispossessed of that city better than Art Shay, one of America's leading photojournalists who died at age 96 in 2016.
Here is Algren, in the 1950s and '60s, wandering a city of winos, beggars, addicts, hookers, pawnbrokers, hucksters, and gamblers, and yet everywhere finding dignity, humor, honor, and tenderness. We see the all-night cafes near Division Street, the boxing clubs of Wabash Avenue, the on-the-make and on-the-take characters of the demimonde.
Long ago, as a kid wandering the bustling corridor between Union and LaSalle Street stations with my mother and sisters, in the several hours between trains from Boston to Seattle, I glanced down the old alleys and caught glimpses of Algren's fast-disappearing Chicago. I've returned to the city many times over the years, but it's Algren's mix of gritty majesty, tragedy, and humanity--so unapologetically reflected in the photography of Art Shay--that sticks like a fine mortar in my memory.
Here is Algren, in the 1950s and '60s, wandering a city of winos, beggars, addicts, hookers, pawnbrokers, hucksters, and gamblers, and yet everywhere finding dignity, humor, honor, and tenderness. We see the all-night cafes near Division Street, the boxing clubs of Wabash Avenue, the on-the-make and on-the-take characters of the demimonde.
Long ago, as a kid wandering the bustling corridor between Union and LaSalle Street stations with my mother and sisters, in the several hours between trains from Boston to Seattle, I glanced down the old alleys and caught glimpses of Algren's fast-disappearing Chicago. I've returned to the city many times over the years, but it's Algren's mix of gritty majesty, tragedy, and humanity--so unapologetically reflected in the photography of Art Shay--that sticks like a fine mortar in my memory.
April 20, 2008
David Mamet writes a short but commanding Foreward in this edition where he describes Art Shay's photos as having "the Chicago accent." Mamet describes Chicago as a city where after decades away, he finds himself "saying dese, dem and dose . . . tapping the other fellow on the forearm to make my point." Mamet closes by saying "Art's work feels like that guy, tapping me on the forearm." That statement really lit me up inside and I have to say I agree; Shay's photos feel like Chicago, in a very personal and persuasive way.
Many of the photos here are the same as it's predecessor, Nelson Algren's Chicago. Although the pictures are formatted quite a bit smaller, and the overall quality of the prints are often not as good, the pictures themselves are just as powerful and telling, and often times present a slightly different frame or crop, highlighting a new angle or detail. A vivid glimpse at the gangways, back alleys, and sidewalks of Chicago.
Many of the photos here are the same as it's predecessor, Nelson Algren's Chicago. Although the pictures are formatted quite a bit smaller, and the overall quality of the prints are often not as good, the pictures themselves are just as powerful and telling, and often times present a slightly different frame or crop, highlighting a new angle or detail. A vivid glimpse at the gangways, back alleys, and sidewalks of Chicago.
January 16, 2009
Shay's photography is, natch, beautiful, but he really does himself and Algren great service by sticking to the Chicago's Nelson Algren conceit. Shay is no slouch as a writer, either, and he does a great job of showing how the city shaped Algren's sensibilities. The opening preface is a great and tender recollection of a friend, and never slips into elegy or sentimentality. Nor, indeed do the photos.
A must read for anyone who wants to see a picture of Marcel Marceau being thrown out of the Art Institute. Or a photo of Simone De Bouvoir's naked ass.
January 16, 2014
I'm behind the curve when it comes to reading Algren's books, but the more I learn of him the more enamored I've become. I'm a sucker for all things gritty and Chicago, so viewing Shay's remarkable photos capturing the time and place of Algren captivated me. Devoured the entire book in one sitting (granted, it's mostly pictures). Highly recommend for those interested in a forgotten era of Chicago and an under-appreciated literary giant.
January 12, 2008
Very interesting photos and essay of Nelson Algren by Art Shay. What else can I say?
October 3, 2013
Great photos, glimpse of Algren
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews