Lee Bey has long been a champion for architecture on Chicago’s south side. In 2017, the photographer, writer, consultant, and senior lecturer at the School of the Art Institute organized an exhibition of his photographs capturing south-side architecture for that year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial. The exhibition, shown at the DuSable Museum, became the inspiration for Bey’s new book Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side (Northwestern University Press), out in October. It’s the first publication to highlight several important but often ignored buildings by a range of well-known architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright and Eero Saarinen. The book’s focus on structures existing in neighborhoods many view as abandoned, blighted, and violent is an important step toward expanding the canon and encouraging Chicagoans to explore the city’s rich architectural history farther afield than the Loop.
In Chicago, people tend to stay local, which means there are architectural gems that many people never see.
The vulnerability of buildings that you talked about earlier is really striking. There are many structures that are gone now, like ghosts haunting what are now vacant, overgrown lots on the street. How do you think those “ghosts” inform the way we understand how we live in this city?
I would want them to have such an effect. That when we, as a city, discuss, honor and lift up this town’s great architecture, we include the buildings in my book and the ones like them all around the south and west sides. I want these places—and the people who live in and around them—preserved and respected. v
