$60.00 U.S. (trade discount)
No e-book has been authorized.
Hardcover
192 pages with 128 photographs and 85 montages by the author = 213 color illustrations
15.0″ x 8.0″ landscape
ISBN 978–1–938086–98–4
Published May 2023
Distributed by Casemate/IPM
www.casemateipm.com
No e-book has been authorized. Published in association with the Center for the Study of Place and in collaboration with Stephen Marc.
Events and Exhibitions
February 26, 2025 at 7pm
Artist Talk
Face to Face: Stephen Marc
Welcoming a Chicago Visionary Back Home
Chicago Center for Photojournalism
by Stephen Marc
with an introduction by Carla D. Hayden
A timely look at the U.S.A. during COVID by a decorated African-American artist and a fitting complement to the author’s American/True Colors, winner of a Gold Medal for Best Book of the Year in Photography in 2021.
Stephen Marc has been creating one of the most comprehensive photographic surveys ever conducted about America and Americans. The survey began in 2007, embraced the transformational Obama and Trump presidencies, and resulted in the publication of American/True Colors in 2020. For his artistry and unique African-American perspective, the Independent Publishers Book Awards gave American/True Colors its 2021 IPPY Gold Medal for Best Book of the Year in Photography. But Marc was not finished, and in Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times he takes us on another sweeping journey, this time focusing on the years straddling COVID-19 when America and Americans were suddenly confronted by unprecedented challenges that affected citizens in every way no matter where they lived.
In Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times, we see how the four-centuries-old American journey continues. Featuring 213 new photographs by the artist, including 85 captivating digital montages, and introduced by Dr. Carla D. Hayden, 14th Librarian of Congress, the book continues Marc’s creative and insightful look at how Americans express themselves and live their lives, for this book in response to the COVID years, controversial Supreme Court rulings, and ever-present impacts of mass shootings and gun violence, social injustice and climate change, inflation and political division, the Big Lie and January 6 insurrection, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and so much more.
In his afterword, Marc shares his thoughts about the America he has seen up close and personal. How, in the search for a more perfect Union, Americans still need to acknowledge and respect both the personal histories that brought all of us here and made us Americans and the truths behind the nation’s layered past that need to be recognized and faced. How, in the process of dealing with many challenges, Americans still find ways to embrace the joy of living and grow and heal as families, communities, and a nation.
About
Stephen Marc is a documentary street photographer and digital montage artist who was raised on the South Side of Chicago. He is Professor of Art at Arizona State University, where he began teaching in 1998, after twenty years on the faculty of the Department of Photography at Columbia College Chicago. In Spring 2022, Marc was also the Stuart B. Cooper Endowed Chair in Photography at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and the 2021–2022 Evelyn Smith Endowed Professor in Art at Arizona State University. Marc was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography in 2021, and he has received grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, and Arts Midwest/National Endowment for the Arts. His awards also include the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art and the Society for Photographic Education’s Insight Award. Marc has published four photography books: American/True Colors (George F. Thompson Publishing, 2020), which won the 2021 IPPY Gold Medal from the Independent Publishers Book Awards for Best Book of the Year in Photography; Passage on the Underground Railroad (University Press of Mississippi, 2009), which has been listed as an Interpretative Program of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, a division of the National Park Service; The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience: Street Life and Culture in Ghana, Jamaica, England, and the United States (Columbia College Chicago, 1992); and Urban Notions (Ataraxia Press, 1983).
Carla D. Hayden is the 14th Librarian of Congress, the first woman and first African American to hold the post since 1802. Dr. Hayden began her career with the Chicago Public Library as a library associate and children’s librarian from 193 to 1979 and as the young-adult services coordinator from 1979 to 1982. She then became the library services coordinator for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago from 1982 to 1987, when she became an assistant professor for Library and Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh until 1991. Dr. Hayden was the deputy commissioner and chief librarian of the Chicago Public Library from 1991 to 1993, and From 1993 until 2016, she was the CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. In 1995, Dr. Hayden was honored with the National Librarian of the Year Award by Library Journal, the first African American to receive this prestigious honor, she served as President of the American Library Association from 2003 to 2004, and in 2020 she was elected to the American Philosophical Society. Born and raised in Chicago, she received her B.S. in political science and African history from Roosevelt University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in library science from the University of Chicago. Her books include A Frontier of Librarianship: Services for Children in Museums (Chicago, 1987) and, as editor, Venture into Cultures: A Resource Book of Multicultural Materials and Programs (American Library Association, 1992).
Slide Show
Praise
“With tremendous energy and being on the scene where public life and events were happening, Stephen Marc traveled extensively across the U.S.A. and employed magnificent concentration through photography and digital combinations to make candid images of life across America. He has brought a universal sensitivity to everyday life in America and created artistic and poetic images that allow for everyone to consider the unities and divisions among the American people. This coast-to-coast survey is a stunning complement to Marc’s award-winning book, American/True Colors.”
—Tom Beck, Chief Curator Emeritus of the Bafford Photography Collection at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and author of An American Vision: John G, Bullock and the Photo-Secession and Music of the Mind: Cliché Verre Photographs and Digital Imagery of Jaromir Stephany
My Place
Trying to choose and/or identify a single location as “My Place” was more challenging than it should be. I have always been a wanderer, going from place-to-place to visit family, attend college (near Los Angeles and Philadelphia), to photograph, or just to entertain and satisfy my curiosity. Although I grew up in Chicago, Champaign, Illinois, has always been my home-away-from-home. I also spent significant time in Michigan at the family farmhouse and for summer camp; frequently visited Cape May, New Jersey; and made numerous road-trips as a member of a family defined by the automobile.
So, after all that, the place I have selected to share is in my old backyard: Chicago’s Promontory Point, locally known as “The Point.” It is a community hang-out located in the neighborhood where I attended high school and is easily within walking distance from where I lived for most of my adult life before I moved to Arizona. This was a park that, in my time, was a place where everybody could go, which was, and is, not something to be taken for granted.
Promontory Point is not just my place, but it a City of Chicago Park District jewel in Burnham Park on the shore of Lake Michigan. It is in the Southside neighborhood of Hyde Park, which I always think of as the University of Chicago’s village, with a view of the downtown Chicago skyline to the north and to the south the high-rise apartment buildings of South Shore and the steel mills of southeast Chicago and Gary, Indiana.
“The Point” is only a few blocks away from the Museum of Science and Industry and the Midway, two significant landmarks remaining from the 1893 World’s Fair. From my high school years, I remember the removal of the fenced-in military installation that housed radar towers, making “The Point” much more beautiful and inviting.
Entering “The Point” through a Lake Shore Drive underpass almost has the ambiance of a giant seashell: often accompanied by the beat of music, the echoed voices of other visitors, and the muted background sounds of the streets. The emergence into the park is like stepping into a different world where you can feel the change of the seasons, leaving behind the business of the day and the hustle of the streets. Just don’t forget to look both ways before crossing the bike path and avoid tripping over the dogs heading to rehydrate at the canine-friendly fountain after a heavy day of play and the ambitious attempts to mark every tree.
Even though I no longer live in Chicago, at least I know “The Point” is still there. When I go back to the city, it is still a special place that I stop to visit; where on a beautiful summer day I confirm that I must be living right, after finding an almost impossible place to park the car. Sometimes I find old friends; if not, I make new ones or just appreciate the moment by myself.
Copyright © 2020 Stephen Marc. All rights reserved.