Stepping Out: Photographs by Michael Abramson

by Michael Abramson

Stepping Out is a view into the celebrated male portraits by the late Chicago photographer Michael Abramson from black nightclubs of mid-70s South Side Chicago. These fantastic, fun, and diverse photos taken by this young white man in a fashionable black environment are celebrated and analyzed in reference and response to today’s black culture.

Abramson attended these clubs regularly from late 1974 to 1977, many of which were run by impresario Johnny Pepper and featured a mixture of blues, jazz, funk and early disco music. The men and women who attended these clubs were dressed to the nines, and this photo book features their exuberant clothing and attitude.

120 pages, Hardcover

Published April 19, 2022

About the author

Michael Abramson looks back at a multi-decade career as a photojournalist primarily working for the Time-Life family of magazines. He has documented a wide range of subjects, from the conflict in Northern Ireland, street gangs in New York, the Wounded Knee occupation, and a barefoot doctor tending to untouchables in Calcutta, India.

His photographic books include Palante, Young Lords Party (reissued by Haymarket); Inside Las Vegas with Mario Puzo; Roy Lichtenstein, Portrait of an Artist; Amy, the Story of a Deaf Girl; and Our Portion of Hell.

REBECCA TREE is his debut novel and it has been a semi-finalist in a previous year’s Amazon Breakout Novel Award competition.