dental death among the wreckage of the Exchange.
The Stock Exchange room was reconstructed five
years later within The Art Institute of Chicago
relying on Nickels photographs.
Chicago-based photographer Victor Skrebneski is
known for his highly dramatic and glamorous adver-
tising photography, for sensuous and sculptural
nude studies, and for casually elegant portraits of
friends and celebrities. His images have been repli-
cated many times and have motivated luxury goods,
cosmetics, jewelry, furs, automobiles, and high fash-
ion apparel. The son of a Polish steelworker, Skreb-
neski attended The School of the Art Institute of
Chicago as a student of painting and sculpture in
1943, and took up photography at the Institute of
Design, from 1947–1949. Moholy and the other
instructors at the ID—Callahan, Siegel, and Siskind
promoted the idea of commercial work and worked
in the business themselves at least part-time. Inspired
by the example of his instructors, by 1952 Skrebneski
had opened his own studio specializing in the fashion
photography. In the 1950s, the largest employers of
commercial photographers were the studios that
catered to the needs of Chicago’s retail stores and
mail-order catalog giants like Sears Roebuck, Mon-
tgomery Wards, Aldens, and Speigel’s. Skrebneski’s
commercial images widely published in both fashion
and general magazine advertisements helped to
define a Chicago fashion photography style.
In 1963, the cosmetic firm Este ́e Lauder selected
Skrebneski to launch its first national advertising
campaign, which marked the beginning of a long
productive client-photographer relationship. In addi-
tion to his commercial work for Este ́e Lauder, Skreb-
neski has also photographed forTown & Countryand
Fitnessmagazines, and for Chanel, Kohler, North-
western Mutual Life Insurance, and Saks Fifth Ave-
nue, among many other clients. A master of studio
lighting, Skrebneski’s light and dark contrasts render
his nude studies, male or female, a sculpted appear-
ance like Roman or Greek gods and goddesses.
Images of singular or multiple models in contorted
poses against the most minimalist background func-
tion to further confirm his obsessive interest in the
human figure. Skrebneski’s portraiture, often of pub-
lic people examines the persona of celebrity with the
likes of Orson Welles, Vanessa Redgrave, Andy War-
hol, and Raquel Welch. In 1999 a major 50-year
retrospective of his work was held at The Museum
of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.
1960s and 1970s
Tom Arndt in Chicago is best known for his images
of ‘‘everyman,’’ taken in bars, on sidewalks and
prairies, in parades, and at state fairs. Arndt has
spent the last several decades navigating the Mid-
west terrain in his over 30-year quest to document
its people and places. There is a timelessness qual-
ity to the people in his photographs, and a sense of
American community that is both sentimental and
cynical. Arndt manages to capture the human con-
dition with subtle visual metaphors for un-named
emotions, like the feeling of being alone in a crowd.
Arndt’s career has been sustained by his roots in
the community—the working-class values and poli-
tics he inherited from his parents, and his love of the
Midwest, particularly his native Minnesota. This
sense of community values is shared in his 1995
bookMeninAmericaand video productionThe
Documentary Urge: Tom Arndtnarrated by Garri-
son Keillor. The award-winning documentary shows
Arndt in action: tracking down his subjects at the
Minnesota State Fair, printing his film in the quiet of
his warehouse darkroom, and preparing for a retro-
spective of his work. Arndt professes to be a com-
mon man who photographs common people. But
there is nothing common about Arndt’s compelling
black-and-white images. As a photographer of the
American scene, Arndt follows in the tradition of
Walker Evans and Robert Frank, his acknowledged
heroes. But as the video documentary intimately
reveals, he is also an artist of deep compassion and
humility, whose powerfully simple and direct photo-
graphs seek to record both the confidence and vul-
nerability of the American people.1980s onward
Established in 1982, the Midwest Photographers
Project organized by The Museum of Contempor-
ary Photography at Columbia College in Chicago
is the premier repository for photographic works
and biographical materials on contemporary Mid-
west photographers. The project is designed to
introduce students, educators, collectors, curators,
scholars, research specialists, and the general pub-
lic to current work by both prominent and emer-
ging area artists. The archive operates as a rotating
collection of works by photographers from Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Mis-
souri, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The artists are repre-
sented in the museum’s Print Study Room by a
body of work from a current project loaned to the
institute for a two-year period. Included with these
photographers are extensive artists’ files with slides
of other projects and biographical material. The
project allows the museum opportunities to high-
light works by selected Midwest photographers in
their thematic exhibitions.UNITED STATES: THE MIDWEST, PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE