BUY HERE from Northwestern University Press $30.00 192 pages
“Southern Exposure is a 35mm love story. Just like relationships, the buildings that Bey photographs reflect our affection and our neglect, and remind us of why we are so devoted to Chicago’s South Side. Through these truly awe-some images, we are inspired to stop, behold, and not take these treasures for granted.” —Mary Pattillo, author of Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City
“Southern Exposure succeeds at what so many books attempt: it changes the way you see your world.” David Hammond, New City
Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side is the first book devoted to the South Side’s rich and unfairly ignored architectural heritage. With lively, insightful text and gallery-quality color photographs by noted Chicago architecture expert Lee Bey, Southern Exposure documents the remarkable and largely unsung architecture of the South Side. The book features an array of landmarks—from a Space Age dry cleaner to a nineteenth-century lagoon that meanders down the middle of a working-class neighborhood street—that are largely absent from arts discourse, in no small part because they sit in a predominantly African American and Latino section of town better known as a place of disinvestment, abandonment, and violence.
Inspired by Bey’s 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial exhibition, Southern Exposure visits sixty sites, including lesser-known but important work by luminaries such as Jeanne Gang, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Eero Saarinen, as well as buildings by pioneering black architects such as Walter T. Bailey, John Moutoussamy, and Roger Margerum.
Pushing against the popular narrative that depicts Chicago’s South Side as an architectural wasteland, Bey shows beautiful and intact buildings and neighborhoods that reflect the value—and potential—of the area. Southern Exposure offers much to delight architecture aficionados and writers, native Chicagoans and guests to the city alike.
About the Author
LEE BEY is a photographer, writer, lecturer, and consultant who documents and interprets the built environment—and the often complex political, social, and racial forces that shape spaces and places. His writing on architecture and urban design has been featured in Architect, Chicago magazine, Architectural Record, and many news outlets. His photography has appeared in Chicago Architect, Old-House Journal, CITE, and in international design publications, including Bauwelt and Modulør. A former Chicago Sun-Times architecture critic, Bey is also a senior lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and served as deputy chief of staff for urban planning under former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley.
Foreword by AMANDA WILLIAMS, a visual artist who trained as an architect. Her works have been exhibited widely and are included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She lives and works on the South Side of Chicago.
Reviews are in on Southern Exposure
“[Southern Exposure] is an intriguing hybrid: a photo book of the South Side, a neighborhood history, a mini-memoir, and a polemic about systemic racism and historic preservation in Chicago.” Martin C. Pedersen, ArchDaily
"I can't decide whether I like Lee Bey's photography best, or the open-faced clarity of his writing, but either way, this is a book Chicago needs—an overdue public embrace of the South Side for those who know it, and an introduction for those who don't. Using the area's overlooked architecture as a way into its history and its people, he reveals treasures for the new Chicago." —Thomas Dyja, author of The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream and Walter White: The Dilemma of Black Identity in America
“Lee Bey’s new book Southern Exposure celebrates the often-overlooked architecture of Chicago’s South Side.” The Guardian (UK)
“Bey, formerly the architect critic at the Chicago Sun-Times and now an editorial writer at the newspaper, deploys a compelling combination of handsome photography, jargon-free analysis and moving personal narrative.” Blair Kamin, Chicago Tribune.
“With an auteur’s lens and a passionate pen, photographer Lee Bey salutes the architecture of his native South Side.” Stephen Ostrowski, Michigan Avenue magazine.
“Southern Exposure celebrates the South Side’s great architecture, from historic and traditional to new and contemporary in style.” Aaron M. Renn.
“Southern Exposure lifts the curtain on that vast architecturally ignored South Side. In his eloquent introduction, Lee Bey speaks bluntly about how prejudice and poverty have joined to virtually keep this section of Chicago out of its history. Most impressive are Bey’s stunning architectural photographs depicting treasures such as the 1941 art moderne Chicago Vocational High School, attributed to John C. Christensen; the Georgian revival former Wabash Avenue YMCA (birthplace of the Harlem Globe Trotters!), designed by Robert C. Berlin in 1911; and John Wellborn Root’s powerful Romanesque St. Gabriel Church, the cathedral of Canaryville. Looking at these precious survivors of South Side history, one is reminded again of how immensely important preservation is to understanding the cultural legacy of a particular community.” —David Garrard Lowe, author of Lost Chicago
“Bey’s diagnosis of the continued omission of so many architectural gems builds upon a growing body of research that demonstrates how the city government left its black communities vulnerable to predatory housing developers, among other exploitative actors.” Tanner Howard, Metropolis
“In Southern Exposure, Bey celebrates the strong, vibrant and beautiful architectural design to be found throughout that part of Chicago that exists south of Cermak Road. This is an area where he grew up and has spent much of his life—an area he clearly loves. But this book also is about how white Chicago and the rest of the nation have seemingly gone out of their way to ignore the cultural riches of South Side.” Patrick Reardon, Third Coast Review
“For young fans and aficionados of Chicago's architecture, this new book is a peek into what's NOT on the typical architecture tour of the city. Peer into 60 sites on the South Side, even those lesser known by widely known architects.” Chicago Parent