Ultimately this is what drove him to work with so many different groups - cliques, rappers, and conflict mediators with Cure Violence (an anti-violence, conflict mediation group, formerly called Ceasefire) - which gives his project such gravity.
“There wasn’t a convenient narrative scope,” he explained. An image of a young woman standing on a porch holding a photo of a friend shot to death reminds us of this.įor Daniel, there were endless ways to think about the violence - both in terms of cause and effect. They wanted to “pull back the curtain on the mythology of the universe of hip hop lyrics” to look at what was really happening in the streets that inspired that content.įor a kid living in a neighborhood where you may be lucky to make it out unscathed, dreams are important to have. After that piece, Daniel and his editors at The Fader realized there was more to explore between the streets and the representation of young black rappers in the media. The impetus for Chicago Fire was drawn from an earlier project Daniel did to document rappers on Chicago’s South Side. Music is close to the heart of this work. It may be a pipe dream, but they certainly aren’t approaching it that way. There is an intensity to their stances that communicates that they aren’t taking a future rap career lightly. In a couple photos, the aspiring rappers huddle, talk and smoke. That said, it’s not all bad news: The Blockheadz are working to make a name for themselves as rap artists on YouTube. According to a Chicago Sun-Times article, nearly half of all violent crimes in the city involve school-age youth. It’s a bond for these guys.” Unfortunately, friction between cliques is often a cause for violence. In an earlier interview, Daniel wrote, “People in The Blockheadz … would interchange the words clique with family. To give a taste of how space and relations are delineated, Daniel worked closely with a clique called The Blockheadz, who live in Marshall Field Garden Apartments. On the phone, he lamented, “Almost all these kids are really good kids, but they get caught up in bullshit, and it becomes very territorial.” It had to be amputated from the knee down.ĭaniel is well-spoken, he chooses his words with care, but when talking about the roots of the violence you can hear the frustration and sadness leak into his voice. The last time he was shot he developed an infection in his left leg. Leon has been shot four separate times within walking distance of his home in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. In one photo Leon Cunningham, 19, lies in bed at Kindred Hospital.
Bokeh chicago series#
So earlier this month, when I rolled across Daniel Shea’s photo series on youth violence in Chicago’s South Side, I was sort of prepared, but his photos still punched me in the gut. I learned that getting a gun was as easy as getting a new pair of sneakers and that organizing something as quintessentially high school as a dance was a huge deal in terms of safety. In a little over an hour, I understood that some kids in Chicago kids didn’t join cliques (think gang but smaller, younger, and less organized crime) but were automatically grouped into cliques based on the block they lived on. Text by Katy McCarthy | Photos by Daniel SheaĪ while back I sat down to listen to a radio special on Chicago public schools and was blown away by what I heard.
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