About the Artists
John Austad
After winning a Bronze Star in World War II for bravery at Normandy, John Austad (1919-1996) joined the Chicago Tribune as a staff photographer in 1950. During that time, he alternated working between general assignment and the color studio. It was with the Tribune, that he documented the Democratic National Convention in 1968. After winning three Edward Scott Beck awards—the newspaper’s annual prize for outstanding journalism—and being honored many times by the Chicago Press Photographers Association, he retired in 1982.
Burt Glinn
Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Burt Glinn (1925-2008) served in the U.S. Army between 1943-46 before attending Harvard University and receiving a B.A. in History and Literature in 1949.
He worked for Life magazine for two years and in 1951 became an associate member of Magnum, the international cooperative founded by a group of photographers that included Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Glinn, along with Eve Arnold and Dennis Stock, was one of the first Americans to join the young photo agency. He became a full member in 1954. Glinn received numerous awards throughout his career, including the Mathew Brady Award for Magazine Photographer of the year from the University of Missouri, and the Best Book of Photographic Reporting from Abroad from the Overseas Press Club. He served as president of American Society of Media Photographers from 1980 - 1981.
Duane Hall
Born and raised in North Carolina, Duane Hall worked as a photojournalist for the Chicago Sun-Times when he covered the Democratic National Convention in 1968. He continued to work for the newspaper into the 1970s, winning numerous local, regional, and national photographic awards. Leaving Chicago, he returned to Siler City, North Carolina and began a free-lance career that took him all over the world covering wars, rebellions, and historic events for most major publications. Hall photographed the Contras in Nicaragua, the peasants in China, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revolution in Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and many others. He has photographed all of the U.S. Presidents since Lyndon Baines Johnson, world leaders such as Anthony Eden, the Shah of Iran, Ben Gurion, Martin Luther King, Pope Paul VI, just to name a few.
Fred W. McDarrah
Born in Brooklyn, Fred W. McDarrah (1926-2007) bought his first camera at the 1939 World's Fair for 39 cents, but did not start taking photographs as a vocation until he was a paratrooper in occupied Japan following World War II. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from New York University in 1954. As chief photographer for the Village Voice during its golden years (1950s-70s), McDarrah took landmark photographs of the Beats, New York artists, 1960s counterculture, Andy Warhol’s Factory, New York politics, architecture, and street life. As photographer Cornell Capa once said: "McDarrah makes me feel that I missed something; something he lived while soaking in its flavor." He was the author or co-author of more than a dozen books, including Beat Generation: Glory Days in Greenwich Village (1996), The Photography Encyclopedia (1999), Anarchy, Protest, and Rebellion (2003).
Ron Pownall
Ron Pownall became interested in photography while shooting The Rolling Stones in Chicago in 1966. He managed to get a summer job with the Chicago Tribune and was hired full-time after graduating from college. While working with the Tribune, he shot the Democratic National Convention in 1968. He was also given music assignments, his first three concerts being Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. In 1970, Pownall moved to Boston and soon photographed Aerosmith. He also linked up with Boston, Elton John, Queen, Liza Minnelli, the J. Geils Band, The Cars, Meatloaf, and Ted Nugent, doing album, publicity, and tour photography. At the same time, his images were included in numerous publications, such as Rolling Stone, Cream, Hit Parader, and many others. He has since broadened his photographic interests.
Art Shay
Born in 1922, Art Shay is a photographer, author, and playwright. He grew up in the Bronx and served as a navigator in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. A former Life magazine reporter, Shay quickly became a Chicago-based free-lance photojournalist for Time, Life, Fortune, and the New York Times Magazine, among others. He has published over 30,000 photographs during his career, which has spanned more than half a century and covered such subjects as John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, the fights of Muhammad Ali, Hugh Hefner’s infamous bedroom office, and Chicago police clubbing demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Shay was on assignment for Time when he covered the DNC. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Portrait Gallery in London.
