Photography and Place

Richard Cahan is an author and co-owner of the Chicago-based publishing company CityFiles Press. He has published several critically acclaimed books, including Edgar Miller and the Handmade Home, Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows, and most recently Richard Nickel Dangerous Years: What He Saw and What He Wrote. Richard was the director of CITY 2000 and worked as the picture editor at the Chicago Sun-Times.

Karen Irvine is Curator and Associate Director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. She has organized over forty exhibitions of contemporary photography at the MoCP and other institutions and written essays for numerous artist monographs and magazines. Irvine is a part-time instructor of photography at Columbia College Chicago. She received an MFA in photography from FAMU, Prague, Czech Republic, and an MA in art history from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

David Schalliol is an associate professor of sociology at St. Olaf College who is interested in the relationship between community, social structure, and place. He exhibits widely, including in the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Centre Régional de la Photographie Hauts-de-France, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. His work has been supported by institutions including the Graham Foundation and the European Union and featured in publications including MAS Context, The New York Times, and Social Science Research. David is the author of Isolated Building Studies (UTAKATADO) and co-author, with Michael Carriere, of The City Creative (The University of Chicago Press). He additionally contributes to such films as Almost There and Highrise: Out My Window, which won an International Digital Emmy for Non-Fiction. His directorial debut, The Area, premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in 2018.