Though confined to a battery cart, Florence used part of her visit to Costco for hearing aids, to shop for “my favorite brands- not yours, darling”...She was lovingly feisty to the end.
Maker
Shay, Arthur
American, 1922-2018
Date2012; printed 2014
MediumInkjet print
Dimensionspaper: 16 in x 20 in
Credit LineGift of the artist
Object number2014:275
About the ArtistOne of Chicago’s most prolific photographers, Art Shay published more than 30,000 photographs during his career, which spanned more than half a century and covered such subjects as John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, the fights of Muhammad Ali, Hugh Hefner’s infamous bedroom office, the last man alive to have seen Abraham Lincoln’s corpse, Chicago police clubbing demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and a swan snubbing a pig as they swim. Some of his favorite photographs, however, are those of Chicago writer Nelson Algren, author of The Man with the Golden Arm and winner of the first National Book Award. Shay and Algren met in 1949 when Shay pitched a story on “the prose poet of the Chicago slums” to his editors at Life magazine. The two men became close friends and spent time roaming near the West Side, encountering addicts, hookers, alcoholics, bums, cops, and hustlers, among many other street characters. The gritty photo essay was never published, but photographs from the series are currently held in many private and public collections. Both passionate about and critical of Chicago, Shay wrote a novel, Never Come Morning, depicting the seedy underbelly of crime and poverty in the city, which was banned by the Chicago Public Library System. After Algren’s death in 1981, Shay published Nelson Algren’s Chicago, a collection of his photographs from the men’s years together as well as accompanying texts. Art Shay worked first as a reporter and then as a photographer for numerous publications including Life, Fortune, The New York Times, and Sports Illustrated. His photograph of Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev on an Iowa farm won Life Magazine’s “Picture of the Year” in 1959. Shay also published several books on photography and sports, including Nelson Algren’s Chicago (1988), Album for an Age (2000), and Animals (2002). His play, Where Have You Gone, Jimmy Stewart was produced by Chicago’s American Theater Company (ATC) in 2002.
![Florence often accompanied me when I was photographing at Northbrook Court Mall. She would scoot from shop to shop while waiting for us to have dinner, or I fussed with my hidden camera. One evening, I saw my beloved wife and model doing what she had steadfastly refused to do all her life, trying on a wig. Years later, here is Florence in her nursing home-surprising me for our Passover dinner [...]](/internal/media/dispatcher/4582/thumbnail)
![A month before she died I took her to Glenwood Hospital in Glenview for her conference with yet another team of oncologists. Florence understood the futility of the visit in which a picture of her ovarian cancer, having spread to her cerebellum, was clearly visible. [...]](/internal/media/dispatcher/4585/thumbnail)
Shay, Arthur
2012; printed 2014
Witkin, Joel-Peter
1992
