Lee Balterman: Carl Sandburg
Lee Balterman: Photographs of 1940s/50s/60s in Chicago
It would be hard to find a less theoretical artist than eighty five year-old Lee Balterman. Balterman made his living as a Chicago-based photographer for Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated and other top magazines, producing memorable, even iconic celebrity portraits (for example, an ebullient President Eisenhower on a campaign swing, a ghostly Carl Sandburg staring into space in a lonely firehouse, a “Shaft”-era Isaac Hayes, conducting business by phone in the plush luxury of a white limousine). Lee Balterman’s Chicago may be long gone, but it’s still a great place to visit.
“I’m crazy about pictures,” he says. “I went around with a camera, and when I saw something — boom! You know, real fast.” And unlike some of his peers in the history of local street photography, he always preferred people to buildings. “Yeah, I like people,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “More or less.”
Lee Balterman: Photographs of Chicago in the 1940s
Slide Show: Lee Balterman’s Photographs of a Chicago Long-Gone
(Please Click Image to View Slide Show)
Please Share This: