They Weren't Kidding, Photos Really Do Last Longer

By Margaret Lyons in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 4, 2004 6:10PM

Real Chicago: Photographs from the Files of the Chicago Sun-Times hits bookstores tomorrow, and we want it pretty badly. If you haven't already perused the dozens of photos, conveniently organized by decade, let us take this opportunity to highly recommend doing so.

The photos themselves are fantastic, obviously, but we also really like the intro pages—we don't get to hear from photojournalists all that often, so we think it's especially cool to get their take on the role of photography in newspapers in general and the Sun-Times in particular. They weigh in on the effects of 35 mm cameras, of color photography, of digital photography, and what each has meant for photographers and photographs.

A few of our favorites: an exquisite portrait, a study in depth of field, so noir it hurts, might actually be worth a thousand words, make that two thousand.