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Originally from the Bronx, Art Shay lived in and around Chicago since 1948. He was an aviator war hero in WWII and then became a Time-Life staff reporter, leaving that to be a full-time photojournalist in 1951. More than 25,000 of his photographs have appeared in numerous publications, including Life, Time, the New York Times, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated. He has won some twenty Art Director awards for distinguished photography, as well as commendation for Life magazine's "Picture of the Year" in 1959. Over 500 of his pictures are in the Pathfinder Time-Life picture archives. He is also the author of more than 75 books: for children, and on sports photography and sports instruction. In 1982, he won the national singles racquetball "Golden Masters" championship and was later inducted into the Jewish Athletic Hall of Fame.
He was close friends with Nelson Algren and went around with him for over 15 years, taking pictures of him at his various haunts. Part of that work is in his 1988 book: Nelson Algren's Chicago, published, ironically, by U. of Illinois Press.
Besides taking pictures of Maxwell Street, Nelson Algren, and Simone De Beauvoir, he also photographed such luminaries as Bushman the Gorilla, Robert Kennedy, and Nikita Krushchev. He is still an active photographer and writer and is now working on an upcoming play based on Algren's love affair with Simone, called Breaking Rule 3.
Art Shay remembers Nelson Algren on Maxwell Street
Nelson felt a kinship to the people who built the place. It was a melting pot. He was aware of the tough road that this immigrant and underdog community had. I remembers him saying, "It must have been great. Nobody could speak a word of English but they all got along, better than in the old country." Nelson wandered around Maxwell Street a lot. He would buy army surplus clothes here. He especially liked to visit the gypsies in their storefronts, a bajour, where they ran little operations, and had a big dog in the front.
Art Shay remembers Marcel Marceau on Maxwell Street
Marcel Marceau liked Maxwell Street because it reminded him of the Paris markets. He liked shopping for caps from the stands and was charmed by the tiny saxophone kazoos that he found.
Art Shay photographs of old Maxwell Street (1950s).
Nelson Algren and Marcel Marceau on Maxwell Street, at the Saxophone kazoo stand (33K).
Maxwell Street looking west towards Halsted (23K). This is the block of Maxwell Street that still mostly remains and that the University of Illinois wants to destroy.
THESE ARE COPYRIGHTED IMAGES. © ART SHAY. REPRODUCTION IS PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF COPYRIGHT HOLDER. Request for reproduction rights can be made to Art Shay <artshay2@aol.com>.
Art Shay on Maxwell Street, March 28, 1999 (photos by Steve Balkin)
On Halsted, getting ready to photograph(21K).
On the northeast corner Maxwell and Halsted, shooting Frank 'Little Sonny' Scott Jr. playing the keys(27K).
Trying on a purple stetson with assistance from Alan Federman at the Adams Joseph Store (formerly Turner Brothers), Halsted and Roosevelt Rd.(21K)
Art Shay talking about his recent return visit to Maxwell Street
Last Sunday, on the anniversary of a long ago visit to Maxwell Street with author Nelson Algren and our friend the famous mime Marcel Marceau, I was appalled at how little of the original treasure trove remained. Chicago's history, culture, all subsumed in the rush for what? In modern terms, "bombing" the area will not do the university anything but harm. This was evident in the talk I heard about the Hispanic people rising up to save the St. Francis Catholic Church in which I watched some 2000 energetic people, mostly young, worship on Palm Sunday.
It would be difficult to plumb the depths of Algren's sorrow at the aspect of his alma mater squeezing the last few buildings of Maxwell Street into the maw of eminent domain or whatever circumlocutions are maintained to complete the shameful "ethnic cleansing" that appears to be going on. The French let their equivalent Maxwell Street markets grow, change and still serve poor people as a traditional center. Without violence the Arabs and other Moslems have taken over numerically from the Jews, as the Hispanics and Blacks are doing around Maxwell Street.
The important thing is that we don't destroy our own Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame. To kill Maxwell Street is to relegate its history, parallel to Chicago's, to the dustbin. No Marceau, no Algren, would deign to visit some university dorms and parking lots serving an "education" apparatus that mindlessly destroys the basic tenets of education -- giving ordinary working class people a place as rough hewn as they are, a place where their children can soak up history -- and as in the case of the Hispanic church -- the power of simpler people to unite against the misguided sociological whims of a blind university board and a city deaf to the sounds and the people that made it great. Just save it. Make Nelson Algren proud to look down on a place for his beloved people. What's left of it.
Art Shay <Artshay2@aol.com>, Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999
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