Uptown Portrait by Robert Rehak

This is a little unusual for this blog, but still relates to the topic of Media Impacts and Unintended Consequences. As many of you know, this is one of two blogs I publish. The other is a blog for my personal photography. It contains my favorite images from 45 years of lugging around cameras. About three months ago, I published several images from a series of documentary portraits I took in a Chicago neighborhood called Uptown, starting in 1973. They went viral. I’ve received 3.2 million hits in the last three months, with virtually no publicity. That’s one unintended consequence.

Another unintended consequence is a book. It’s called Uptown: Portrait of a Chicago Neighborhood in the Mid-1970s by Robert Rehak. As a result of all the interest in the photos, I became convinced that there was a market for the book. It will be coming out in a couple weeks.

A third unintended consequence was all the feedback I got on the images. People wrote me about what happened to the people in them. The notes created a fascinating longitudinal study. They gave me additional details on times, dates, places and events and told me what happened to the people I photographed 40 years ago. As a result, the book turned into a collaborative history project.

I’ll be unveiling Uptown: Portrait of a Chicago Neighborhood in the Mid-1970s at the Chicago Public Library in Uptown on November 21 at 4PM. The event is sponsored by the Chicago Book Expo and the Chicago Public Library.

I hope you can attend. I would like to thank all the readers in person who wrote to me about the images and helped with the book. They made it a much richer experience.

Uptown: Portrait of a Chicago Neighborhood in the Mid-1970s by Robert Rehak

Uptown_CoverIt’s been a month since I’ve posted on this site. I’ve been busy completing a new book referenced in the previous post.  The book is Uptown: Portrait of a Chicago Neighborhood in the Mid-1970s by Robert Rehak.  You can now pre-order it on Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com.

The coffee-table-sized book (9.5″ x 13″) will be in bookstores before Thanksgiving. Published by Chicago’s Books Press, an imprint of Chicago’s Neighborhoods, Inc., the book contains 272 pages, 250+ illustrations, plus an introduction and captions that put the images and the place in historical context. For photographers, the book also contains notes about the equipment and techniques used when taking the photos.

Uptown: Portrait of a Chicago Neighborhood in the Mid-1970s by Robert Rehak is a time capsule from 40 years ago. It shows you what life was like in one of Chicago’s most diverse and densely populated neighborhoods. Although the book specifically focuses on one neighborhood in Chicago, almost every large city in America has a neighborhood coping with similar challenges.

When I posted several of the images on my photoblog, bobrehak.com, they immediately went viral. I’d like to thank all the readers who took their valuable time to write me with notes of appreciation and to help flesh out details that make the book a much richer experience. They provided the inspiration for this book.

Viewed as a book, instead of a website, these photos become even more powerful. The images are much larger and higher resolution, revealing details not visible on the Web. The images are also arranged in a more logical sequence – when putting together the website, I was responding to reader requests. Finally, when you see all of the images back to back, as opposed to opening them one by one, it’s easier to see the forces that were shaping this fascinating neighborhood and the way ordinary people adapted to them. Below are two sample spreads from the book.

uptown-spreads-for-websitePhotographing in Uptown for four years made me much less judgmental and much more understanding of the troubles other people face. I experienced firsthand the plight of parents forced to chose between shoes and food for their children. I wish every senator and congressman had the opportunity to walk the streets of Uptown in the 1970s. It might have changed some of our national priorities.

Once again, thank you all for all your help. I hope you enjoy the book and am eager to hear your feedback.

 

Viral Communications and the Internet

So, we’ve all heard about viral communications … as with those videos that someone posts on YouTube. Someone sees it, tells their friends, who tell THEIR friends, who tell THEIR friends and so on. It’s kind of like in the days before the Internet when “rumors would spread like wildfire.”

Robert Rehak’s Own Mini-Viral Communication Experience

Two days ago, a lady named Joanne Asala in Chicago who edits CompassRose.org said that she had come across some photographs that I had posted on BobRehak.com. I took them in Chicago’s Uptown Neighborhood back in the mid-1970s and the focus of her blog is the history of that neighborhood.

She asked permission to post two of the photos and refer people to my site to see the rest. I agreed. She posted them late Wednesday night. When I woke up on Thursday morning, traffic on BobRehak.com had spiked. My photo site had received 800 visits by 4 am. Within 24 hours, that number had swelled to more than 8000 and the trend has continued today – with each visitor viewing an average of 13 photos.

Uptown28

The point of talking about this mini-viral episode is not to brag, but to point out how valuable a single link can be. Ms. Asala’s post led to several others on Facebook and as news of my “historical time capsule” (as she called it) spread throughout Chicago, my site received thousands of new visitors and tens of thousands of page views.

Ground Zero for Poverty

At one time, in the 1920s, Uptown had been a summer resort and playground for Chicago’s rich and famous. By the 1970s, the neighborhood had spiraled downward. It was ground zero for poverty. Today, it seems Uptown is lurching toward gentrification again. The photos provide an interesting historical contrast.

Many of the visitors emailed me to say how the portfolio brought back memories of growing up in the area. Some felt misty-eyed. Others wanted to purchase prints. Others wanted to know whether I had pictures of their friends in my archives. Still others emailed me about the locations in the photos and told me what they looked like today. (I now live in Houston, not Chicago.)

Positive Side Effects of Viral Communication

Thanks to Ms. Asala, I was able to meet and network with many people online that I never would have been able to meet in real life. Often I talk about the side effects of communication technology on this blog. This is one side effect that was very positive.

From a marketers point of view, viral communications can be a dream – or nightmare – come true. Which it is depends on the content of the communication being spread. Several weeks ago, I wrote a post about viral communications “gone bad.” It was a review of Steven Wyer’s compelling book about Internet defamation and invasion of privacy. His book is called Violated Online. Happily, this experience was all positive.

 Lessons learned

I took three things away from this experience:

  1. Viral communications can improve site traffic exponentially. From an average of 100 visitors a day, traffic on BobRehak.com jumped to 10,000 in a little more than 24 hours. That’s a 100x increase from just one initial link!
  2. Quality content is what keeps viral communication going. Without friends telling their friends, referrals die out.
  3. Perhaps marketers should spend more time improving the quality of their communication and less time carpet bombing the public with insipid ads and commercials that people ignore.