Chicago People

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Spring 2002 by Hoberman, Michael

Chicago People. By Richard Younker (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Pp. Viii, 168. Illus. Cloth, $50.00, paper $20.00.)

Chicago people size you up. Men and women of the broadshouldered city look directly at strangers and assess. Their eyes are nimble calculators. Their faces tell all and nothing simultaneously; they are windows to the urban soul. Looking at several pages worth of Chicago people has educated me to a certain humility. Looking at several pages worth of Chicago people and reading their monologues in juxtaposition with their faces has taught me that they will never be the objects of anyone's gaze. Every page of Richard Younker's book evokes the solidity and candor of Chicago people-their will to survive and, occasionally, prosper "close to the edge" (vii). If the book can be said to be built around any sort of unifying theme, it would have to be this one, as spoken by the salvage man photographed on page 73: "You got to scuffle. What I call myself doin' out here. Ari I do alright. I do ALright." Life on these streets is in large part a salvage operation, and Chicago people are scufflers every one. But the monologues and portraits featured here invite us to witness and take notice without pity or reverence. Such emotional responses on our part would be superfluous. A salvage operation, by definition, precludes such wastefulness.

Younker's preface sets the proper tone of a singularly poignant but unsentimental journey. His subjects, he tells us, "survive by wit and cunning"; some "are scorned and feared" (vii). Although the portraits include a large number of perfectly likeable and even innocent subjects (children, for instance, are all over the book, depicted in baseball sandlots, churches and in their parents' loving embrace; so too are couples and families), the demeanor of Younker's Chicago people tends quite strongly to alertness, to an awareness of hard facts. The seven pre-teen boys in "Backyard scene, Wellington and Lakewood, July 1975" are smiling. One of them is cradling a small dog. They appear to be relaxed in one another's company, as well as in ours. But they are also poised for action, their baseball gloves open and bats at the ready. Only a bit of imagination is necessary to see the natural resemblance they bear to seven young men who appear opposite the text in " . . . he won't look me in the face." Here, the addition of cigarettes, tattoos and muscles suggests the passage of time. But one thing hasn't changed: these boys, too, look to be ready for action, fully engaged and alert to the moment and content to look us square in the face. Indeed, the sharp structural tidiness of the image on page 25 articulates the book's apparent interest in the natural progression from youth to adulthood on Chicago's streets. On the left hand side of the photograph, a row of boys sits waiting in a barbershop. Across the neatly demarcated aisle from them are the barbers and their customers, grown men whose turn has already come.

The more obviously cunning, or at least more readily associated with criminal and potentially threatening behavior, convey a similar presence-and double-edgedness. In "Mister Future (Street Gang Leader)," we hear the words (and see the face?-possibly, but Younker has indicated in his preface that some of his book's words, though they are clearly meant to complement their accompanying photographs, are not necessarily the words of those depicted) of Ray, whose alias, Mister Future, bespeaks a mixed message. He's hurt and killed his share of victims, and never been caught for his acts of violence. But his nickname doesn't pertain to his brazenness. He's called Mister Future because" . . everyone around here says / it's gonna happen, /someone's gonna do me in later on" (34). Where the baseball-playing boys bear a look of careless innocence which-in its fearlessness-may also foretell a more aggressive future-Mr. Future, like every one of the other deviant figures depicted in Chicago People, is at once menacing and vulnerable: a shared humanity is the common currency. Whether we are looking at babies, bookies or blues musicians, Chicago People consistently refuses to guide our emotions. Its author believes too firmly in his subjects' autonomy, their right and ability to represent themselves, both visually and verbally.

Younker's accomplishments as a documentarian seem to me to stem as well from his ability to depict several orientations at once through all manner of unpretentious but effective compositional and cropping strategies. "Holy Trinity Polish Church, 1118 North Noble, June 1991" (3) offers not faces but backs-those of the parishioners worshipping indoors and that of a small girl who looks in on them but-for some reason-remains not only outside of the sanctum but outdoors altogether. In the photograph accompanying the "Miss Oh-So-Tired" text (17), we look and are looked at by two African-American children-one of whom leans out of a first-storey window and the other of whom faces the camera from his outdoor perch on the side of the house. "Little Enclaves" (11) depicts several worlds as well-as its title suggests-the inside-the-car view of a smiling man at the wheel, the disoriented baby next to him and that of the outdoor onlookers who lean in and through the car window. The photographs tell several stories at once; as fitting urban metaphors, they show us people who share one another's company without necessarily being together. The image accompanying "Scavenger" shows us a passed-out wino with two bemused onlookers nearby. The city belongs, in effect, to people like Cochise (the scavenger in question, but not necessarily any one of the people depicted in the photograph) who have learned how to rely on themselves in large part because they have learned that no one else around warrants their trust. " . . . If all I got's the clothes/ on my back, 'nough change/ for a polish or a pint of vodka . if all I got's subSIStence/what can the lawyer or my wife take out of that?" (132).