Mark Steinmetz made the photographs in Chicago between 1988 and 1991, years when the city’s neighborhoods, architecture, and energy offered him a subject distinct from the American South with which he is primarily associated. Published by Nazraeli Press in 2025, the book gathers 129 duotone plates across 148 pages. It is an accumulation of quiet moments and intimate portraits of residents rather than a survey of landmarks. The city registers indirectly, through light, weather, and the spacing between people, and the late 1980s and early 1990s remain legible in what the camera records without comment.

Peter Galassi, chief curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art from 1991 to 2011, opens the volume with an essay. The essay supplies a textual opening before the photographic sequence unfolds. The publisher describes Chicago as an important and evolving aspect of that artistic journey, treating the city as a chapter in an ongoing relationship rather than a detour.

The making of the object is considered. The photographs are printed in duotone on a special matte art paper, and the book is bound in two-tone brown linen over boards at roughly 26.7 by 30.5 centimeters. Nazraeli issued the first printing in 1,500 copies to coincide with an exhibition of the same name at Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago. A special edition of 100 numbered and signed copies in a slipcase, and a deluxe edition of 12 copies with a signed gelatin silver print, were also announced.

For collectors, the significance lies in timing and continuity. The interval between the photographs of 1988–1991 and this 2025 publication invites readers to consider both the recorded moment and its later presentation in book form. Steinmetz is a Guggenheim Fellow, and his work is held by the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.