What a Place We Have Wrought!

At CPC we have students who range in age from 17 to 67. We have people who never went to high school and people with PhDs. We have teachers (mostly volunteers) who have degrees in Information Technology, Chemical Engineering, Communications, Art, Art Photography, Theater Directing, City Planning, History, Accounting, Drama (that must be me), Architecture, Law, MBAs and on and on and on.

We have students and teachers who have worked as Construction Laborers, Messenger Boys, Assistant Photographers, Photographers, Paralegals, Massage Therapists, Physical Therapists, Carpenters, Actors and Actresses, Flight Attendants, Electrical Engineers, Grammar School Teachers, High School Teachers, University Teachers, Housewives, Sales Men and Women, Real Estate Brokers, Real Estate Developers, Doctors, people who work or have worked for the railroad, for IBM, for Quaker and Kraft Foods, for Blue Cross Blue Shield, for the State of Illinois, many other states, Cook County, and the City of Chicago.We have people who have worked for or attended the Chicago Community Colleges, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Loyola University, De Paul University, University of Illinois at Chicago and other state locations.

We have people from the Czech Republic, Poland, Japan, Finland, Spain, France, Turkey, Ethiopia, England, Ireland, Mexico, Israel, Canada, Malaysia, Philippines, China, India, Pakistan and many other countries. We have people from Central America and South America and all of the continents of the world.

All of these people learn, and help other people learn, Film and Digital Photography. And they learn about themselves and each other; they teach about themselves and each other. They play and experiment with film and computers and imagery and try, and succeed, to communicate about themselves and each other through Photography.

We've accomplished this with the work of volunteers and through class fees. No one has ever been turned away because they didn't have money for classes. To date (even though the Chicago Photography Center is a Federally approved 501(c)(3) which is a not-for-profit community service organization) we have never asked for money from private foundations or the Illinois Arts Counsel or the National Endowment for the Arts. When we purchased our space on December 14, 2006 we obtained the down payment from many people in our community as a loan to be paid off, with interest, in five years. Of course, contributions are accepted, but never required.

We have all done this, to our ability and our means and our spirit and our hard work and our commitment to an open community and to each other. What will we look like on January 1, 2011?

Richard Stromberg
Program Director
(773) 549-1631

"If you are a product of your environment, choose the environment you wish to be a product of."