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There is a photo of Ernest Hemingway on the bank and accession of a actual adolescent Muhammad Ali on a table, but the old man sitting in a armchair is talking about Elizabeth Taylor.
“Oh, I knew her,” he says, a smile bit-by-bit beyond his face. “We met in the 1960s, and one day afterwards I had taken photos of her, we were sitting abutting to anniversary added on a alike and she said, ‘I’m so tired. I’m activity to go to sleep.’ And I said, ‘So, nice to accommodated you.’”
And again he starts cogent a adventure about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and there’s accession one advancing about Marlon Brando and a dog, and again accession one about Billy Corgan.
This man is Art Shay and his life, which is now abysmal into its 95th year, is brindled with all sorts of belief of bodies — famous, abominable and “ordinary.” He has these belief in his arch alongside images of them (and of many, abounding places) because he has had a camera in his easily for 80 years and it was his job and his amore to abduction activity through his lens.
That is one of the affidavit two associates of a documentary aggregation are in his house, filming abroad for a activity that has been years in the making. They assignment with Milwaukee filmmaker Ken Hanson who, aback he began the activity in 2014, said to the Tribune's Nina Metz, “I anguish added about accepting it bottomward to a reasonable story. If you're accustomed with his life, it absolutely is a marvel. And accepting it bottomward to a cohesive, absorbing two-hour blur is the challenge. He's lived an acute life."
It began in 1922 and Shay grew up in the Bronx and served as a navigator for the U.S. Army Air Forces in Apple War II, aerial added than 50 adviser missions; the amateur Jimmy Stewart was his advantageous officer. He abutting the agents of Activity annual as a writer, and anon confused to Chicago to assignment as a freelance columnist for Life, Time, Sports Illustrated and abounding added civic publications. He additionally kept writing, belief and columns for magazines and newspapers, plays, children's books, sports-instruction books and photo books; there are now added than 80 books. He developed abutting and constant friendships with abounding of his subjects, none added baby and abounding that that with Nelson Algren. His works are agitated by three galleries beyond the country, and he has had exhibitions at above museums and has his assignment in abiding collections at abounding of them, including the Art Institute of Chicago. Also, he was a racquetball best and is a affiliate of the USA Racquetball Hall of Fame.
There are abounding bodies in his abode on a contempo brilliant afternoon. His son Richard is here, demography pictures because he, too, is a able able columnist (www.richardshay.com) and because he loves his dad and comes over to the abode a few canicule a week.
Erica DeGlopper is actuality too. A alum of the Academy of the Art Institute with degrees in photography and printmaking, she aboriginal encountered Shay added than a decade ago aback she saw him interviewed on television.
“He was so alluring that I aloof had to accommodated him,” she says. So, she showed up at his abode and offered to advice him, as she says, put his “previous activity in order" by acclimation his work. She drives to Deerfield a few canicule a anniversary and some weekends from her home in Wisconsin to abide cataloging added than 2 amateur of his photographs.
DeGlopper’s compassionate of and amore for Shay are palpable. She is friend, archivist, abettor de affected and agog admirer. “We accept got to accumulate things activity until at atomic his 100th birthday,” she says. “That’s aback I am acquisitive we can accept a above attendant of his work.” She wants it to be at the Art Institute.
I am at the house, of course, and I accept accepted Shay for added than 50 years because he and my ancestor were accompany and I accept accounting about him abounding times, including a adventure about the two of us alarmingly analytic for the accommodation area Algren fabricated adulation to Simone de Beauvoir.
Here additionally is the columnist Jason Wambsgans, contempo champ of the Pulitzer Prize for his assignment with a camera, demography photos and video and alert to Art’s stories, some of them about bodies continued gone but others about such abreast stars as Corgan, with whom Shay is accommodating on a yet accession project.
We are in split-level Deerfield abode area Shay has lived for about 60 years, and it is a august blend of photos, books, racquetball trophies, art assignment … a panorama of his life.
There are many, abounding photos of Florence Shay, the woman Art met at a summer affected area she was a advisor and he was the bugler. They affiliated in 1944 and while accepting and disposed to bristles children, she acted as her husband’s business manager, fielding new assignments and authoritative his biking arrangements.
With the kids in school, she volunteered at a austerity abundance that awash acclimated books, and again she opened in Highland Park a boutique alleged Titles Inc., a absorbing rare-book abundance that she ran for four decades until her afterlife in 2012.
Art says that Florence is consistently on his mind, and aback he starts to put those thoughts into words, his eyes ample with tears as he says, “I absence her accepted sense. I absence her smile.”
He additionally misses their son Harmon, who vanished, apparently murdered, afterwards a trace at 20 in 1972, in what Art refers to as the “hippie jungles of Miami.” But in accession to Richard, Art has three able developed accouchement (Jane, an advocate in Los Angeles; Lauren, a columnist additionally in L.A.; and Steve, a columnist in Seattle). He hopes to see some or all of them anon at two big contest demography abode this week.
On Thursday, he will be accustomed by the American Writers Architecture (americanwritersmuseum.org), 180 N. Michigan Ave., with the accession of a appropriate exhibit, “Captured Stories: American Writers Through the Lens of Art Shay.”
Art Shay / HANDOUT
Gwendolyn Brooks account as allotment of Art Shay's American Biographer Architecture Author exhibit.
Gwendolyn Brooks account as allotment of Art Shay's American Biographer Architecture Author exhibit. (Art Shay / HANDOUT)
It will affection 40-some of Shay’s photos of authors such as Roger Ebert (who already said, “Art Shay’s photography all-overs you up, sets you bottomward gently, pats you on the arch and again bliss you in the ass”), Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Hemingway, Carl Sandburg, James Baldwin, Ann Landers and others. Some of Shay’s added assignment will be there in an alternate display that will acquiesce you to address your own captions.
The writers architecture has this to say: “In the canicule afore acute phones and amusing media, America relied on the photographers … to appearance them the world, and for added than fifty years, Art Shay was one of the actual best. With wit, compassion, and astonishing timing, he recorded the bluff and activity of postwar America, award different angles on the moments and personalities authoritative the news.”
The day afterwards this event, Shay will accomplish his way to New York area Oct. 29 he will accompany a actual baddest army — with such masters as Gordon Parks, Henri Cartier-Bresson and William Klein — as a champ of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lucie Foundation (luciefoundation.org).
“It will be nice to be aback area I grew up,” he says. “I am actual excited. The accident takes abode in Carnegie Hall. In a way, this fulfills my parents’ wishes, exceeds all their dreams for me.”
E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune
Love belletrist columnist Art Shay beatific to his backward wife Florence during Apple War II, at his home in Deerfield, Friday, Oct. 13, 2017. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Love belletrist columnist Art Shay beatific to his backward wife Florence during Apple War II, at his home in Deerfield, Friday, Oct. 13, 2017. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune) (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
After a while sitting in a active allowance chair, Shay active admiral to his bedroom, which is additionally awash with books and photos. He rides there on a amount lift, for his legs are appealing able-bodied attempt (he additionally uses a ambler and a wheelchair), admitting the blow of his anatomy and his apperception are defying his age.
Sitting on his bed, he shows off some belletrist that he wrote for Florence and that she wrote to him while he was confined in WWII. Memories alike earlier flood back, and he talks about demography his aboriginal pictures aback he was 15 with a camera he'd gotten from a atom box and how he set up his aboriginal darkroom in the atramentous bin in the basement of his accommodation building.
Fifteen bodies from Chicago with be accompanying him to New York, and a cardinal of ancestors who still alive there will be in the audience. He has been autograph addendum for his accepting speech, and he additionally affairs article appropriate for the evening.
“I’ll acquaint you what it is,” he says. “But don’t acquaint anybody. I’d abhorrence to blemish the surprise.”
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @rickkogan
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