Michael Weinstein

Chris Verene trashes any vestige of the myth that the Midwestern small town is an idyll of pastoral wholesomeness in his color social documentary of his blue-collar family and friends--some of them poverty-stricken--in Galesburg, Illinois. Trailer trash comes to mind when we look at Verene's subjects' environments, but the photographer is a loving insider who celebrates his subjects when they are at play and makes us confront them unvarnished when they are struggling to stay afloat. Ironies are inevitable when one approaches people living in straitened circumstances sensitively and without patronizing humanism or a condescending eye for the grotesque, as when we see Amber--an attractive young woman who lives in her car--wearing headphones and bending over the back of the front seat to minister to her toddler and infant whom she has named Mercedes and Lexus.

Chris Verene shows at gescheidle, 118 North Peoria, (312)226-3500, through April 29. (2007-03-13)

Also by Michael Weinstein

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