Perez, Antonio

This area has been my home since birth and has a rich family and work-ethic history. Through my photographs I hope to show its many hidden treasures, see in the expressions of the people. – Antonio Perez, 1988

Communion Procession, South Chicago, 82nd and South Shore Drive was made at 8200 South Shore Drive during St. Michael's annual First Holy Communion procession, in which children walk from their grammar school to the church for communion mass (less than a block away). It is a neighborhood and an event Perez has photographed on multiple occasions. This picture is not only a document of a particular moment in time, but as the nuns have since left St. Michael's, it has become a record of the institution's history. From one of the windows of the homes in the background, another photographer trains his camera on the same procession.

Antonio Perez was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1963. He holds a BA in photojournalism from Columbia College Chicago (1985) and works as a full-time staff photographer with the Chicago Tribune. His photographs have been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Cultural Center, Smithsonian Institution, and the Wright Gallery at UCLA. They have also appeared in People, The New York Times, Chicago Magazine, and Chicago Tribune Magazine. His work can also be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and Chicago Historical Society.