Chicago by Stanley Kubrick

The city through the lens of the future director of "A Clockwork Orange."

Amanda Uren

1949

People arriving at a Chicago theater for show starring, in person, Jack Carson, Marion Hutton, and Robert Alda. Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Before he became the ground-breaking film producer, director and screenwriter, Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) had another talent.  He was a journalistic photographer. Kubrick began by working for his school magazine, and, after one of his photographs was accepted by Look magazine, he became a Look apprentice.

Overhead view of the "L" elevated railway. Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Looking down from the "L." Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Men, probably commuters, walking along a train platform. Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Kubrick's work had a narrative, "story-telling" quality across his photographic essays - like these images at a steel-works.

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

In 1949, Look magazine published the series "Chicago - City of Extremes" from which these images are taken. With low light and high contrast these images show the people of Chicago at work and play.In these photographs, the 21-year-old Kubrick documented commuters, steel workers, models, butchers, wrestlers, school children, the disenfranchised and, below, traders.

The Chicago Board of Trade. Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Two images show a model puffing a cigarette while a secretary looks on in the office of a Chicago lingerie company.

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Racks of meat in a Chicago meat locker.

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

The crowd at a wrestling match.

Spectators at a wrestling match between Gorgeous George and another wrestler Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

This crowd had come to see Gorgeous George.  George Raymond Wagner - a.k.a Gorgeous George - was an American professional wrestler in the 1940s and 50s. George adopted a flamboyant persona, dying his hair platinum blond and wearing gold bobby pins (George pins) which he distributed to the women in the audience (below). 

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Gorgeous George would routinely make a dramatic entrance to the arena, with music, a purple spotlight and draped in a sequinned cloak. 

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

A competing wrestler strides toward Gorgeous George. Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

George became immensely popular when televisions became widespread in American homes. His style of self promotion is said to have inspired the public image of Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) and the soul singer James Brown. The young Ali met George at a radio station. 

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

A group of images of children at school.

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Lastly, an African-American woman and her four children.
An industrial boom led to a large scale influx of African-American workers and their families to Chicago, part of what became known as the Great Migration. Although Illinois had the most progressive anti-discrimination legislation in America, racially restrictive practices were in force, coupled by increased competition from other immigrant groups. 

African-American mother and her four children in their tenement apartment Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Many African-Americans lived in poverty and overcrowded slum conditions in an area known as the "Black Belt", on Chicago's South Side. This inequality sparked the formation of the The Chicago Freedom Movement, also known as the Chicago Open Housing Movement. One of its leaders was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Credit: LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Chicago by Stanley Kubrick

Chris Wild

1949