Pioneering Black Architects in Los Angeles and Chicago

LA-based photographer Janna Ireland and Chicago-based photographer Lee Bey will lecture as part of MAS Context’s 2021 Spring Talks series.

Pioneering Black Architects in Los Angeles and Chicago

This event explores the work of pioneering Black architects in Los Angeles and Chicago through the lenses of photographers Janna Ireland and Lee Bey. Their recent books, Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View and Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side, examine and document the buildings, from private homes to churches and hospitals, designed by a series of Black architects that left their mark in those cities.

Janna Ireland will discuss the work of Paul R. Williams, the legendary Los Angeles architect who became the first Black member of the American Institute of Architects and, later, the first Black recipient of the AIA Gold Medal. Ireland’s book, Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View, contains over 200 photographs taken at Williams’s buildings, from modest homes for middle class families to mansions for the elite.

Lee Bey’s Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side is the first book devoted to the South Side’s rich and unfairly ignored architectural heritage. It documents the remarkable and largely unsung architecture of the South Side, including buildings by pioneering Black architects such as Walter T. Bailey, John Moutoussamy, and Roger Margerum.

For more information about this talk, please visit: https://www.mascontext.com/events/mas-context-spring-talks-2021/pioneering-black-architects-in-los-angeles-and-chicago/

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