By The Arts Palette

Under the Surface: A Photographic Portrait of the Middle East, by internationally acclaimed photographer Hossein Fatemi, will make its United States debut in Chicago on Saturday, June 7.
Featuring a number of never-before-seen photographs, the exhibition documents the many facets of the Middle East’s complex society, lifting the veil on some of the less observed areas and realities of daily life. The exhibition will also feature images published in The New York Times Sunday Review and The New York Times Lens.
A native of Iran and having traveled throughout the Middle East for more than a decade, Fatemi possesses a deep understanding and knowledge of Islamic cultures that differentiates him from American and European photographers.
Through his lens, Fatemi reveals the reality of daily life, particularly for women and youth, in a complex and changing society.
Fatemi’s work exposes the attempts of millions of people to navigate a precarious path through a thicket of religious legislation and custom while pressured by the infiltration of a fast-paced, modern world.

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Posted on May 27, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

1. Professor’s Book On Gay Steelworkers Is Must-Read.
2. Duncan Hines Was A Real Guy, And Kind Of A Jerk.
3. Naperville Author’s Photo Totally Not Retouched.

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Posted on May 22, 2014

Gun Battles, Bombings And Assassinations

“Mother Jones once proclaimed Illinois to be ‘the best-organized labor state in America,’ and the people of the Illinois coalfields – where Kevin Corley’s enjoyable new novel Sixteen Tons takes place – were always at the center of the action,” David Markwell writes for Labor Notes.

At the beginning of the nationwide coal strike of 1897, only 400 Illinois miners were members of the United Mine Workers of America. By the strike’s conclusion, the number stood at 30,000.
The following year owners of the Chicago-Virden Coal Company brought in non-union miners from out of state. The effort to land them prompted a confrontation known in popular local history as the “Virden Mine Riot.” A number of security guards and striking miners were shot dead, and many more were injured.
But the non-union miners never got off the train, and the gains made by the 1897 strike (higher wages, union recognition) were solidified. At her request, Mother Jones was later buried in the only union-owned cemetery in America, with the striking miners who died at Virden.
Illinois miners later grew dissatisfied with what they saw as the autocratic rule of United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis. They and their families formed the breakaway union Progressive Miners of America in 1932 to get grassroots control over union decision-making.
Sixteen Tons is grounded in this historical context. Beginning in the aftermath of the 1897 strike, the book traces several decades of trying times for the Vacca family, Italian immigrants to Illinois.

Click through for the rest of Markwell’s review.

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Posted on May 20, 2014

Plus: 600 Eggs

1. “Everybody knows that one of the driving forces behind the 1919 Black Sox scandal was that the White Sox players were so upset with the penny-pinching ways of owner Charles Comiskey that they conspired with gamblers to throw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds,” Paul Hagen writes for MLB.com.
“But what if what everybody knows is wrong
“That’s the bold premise of Tim Hornbaker in Turning the Black Sox White: The Misunderstood Legacy of Charles A. Comiskey.”

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Posted on May 14, 2014

Plus: Michael Jordan’s Fucked-Up Family

“When Myra Greene asked her white friends to be a part of her photographic exploration of whiteness, their first question was usually, ‘Why?’ Their second: ‘What should I wear?'” Jordan Teicher writes for Slate.
“As Greene traveled the country making collaborative portraits for her book My White Friends, the answers were often ambiguous. But the conversations they spawned were fruitful, if slightly foreign, to her subjects. ‘Being asked to be in a photograph because of race has happened many times in my life,’ Greene said, who is African-American. ‘I don’t think a lot of white people have been asked to do something because of their racial identity. It changes the way they think of that experience of being photographed.’
“Greene, an associate professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago, has frequently used photography as a means to explore questions of race and its representation.”

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Posted on May 6, 2014