In conjunction with the exhibition, The Essential Art Shay: Selected Photographs, the Chicago History Museum invites visitors to Ask Art a question about his nearly sixty-year career in photojournalism.

To submit a question, visit The Essential Art Shay at the Chicago History Museum. The Ask Art kiosk is located at the end of the exhibition. Shay's answers to selected questions will be posted online periodically. The Essential Art Shay is on display through September 23, 2007.

How long did it take you to perfect the use of your hidden cameras? Have you ever been caught while using one?

I learned the art of hidden cameras from a great Life photographer with whom I worked as a reporter in Washington. We used a shoeshine box for some jobs and also a chest camera with [the] lens peeping through [a] hole in a tie.

Are there any famous moments you wish you had been able to photograph or iconic pictures you wish you had been the one to take?

Yes, the moon landing. Also, we had a game at Life, asking the editor which photographer he’d chose to shoot the second coming of Jesus. The great portrait photographer Philippe Halsman was disappointed when editor Joe Thorndike chose me over him: "While you were setting up your tripod, Philippe," said Joe, "Shay would have taken thirty-six pictures and gotten a signed release."

There aren’t many pictures I’d kill to have taken. I once walked through an Art Institute exhibit of five hundred of a New York competitor’s pictures. I saw but one I wished I had taken, but I’ve forgotten what it was, so it wasn’t that memorable.

Another game we played at Life was the spurious news event from the past coming over our ticker. We would imitate the styles of the news editors, who were all glib and, they thought, so with it. Something like: "We hear a rumor that the Northerners and Southerners plan to meet for an armistice at a courthouse in Pennsylvania at Appomattox...See if someone in the Chicago Bureau with Washington connections can get them to change the place to Intercourse, Pa...Make for much better copy if indeed Lee turns his sword over to Grant...If you cover Grant, try to turn label of his whiskey bottle away from the lens. We have a lot of whiskey advertisers and chances are Grant drinks some crappy brand."

I’d like to have worked with Nathaniel Hawthorne shooting the start of the American Revolution on the rude bridge that arched the flood or gotten a picture of poor Crispus Attucks, the first black man killed in the war as he was fighting.

When photographing strangers in public spaces, do you ever ask permission before shooting? Has anyone ever approached you for taking their picture without their knowledge?

It’s sometimes a ticklish situation. Do you mean "reproached me" for taking their picture? Yes, many times. If they’re part of a news event they have no legal argument, but I would not use a picture for an ad without permission...I’ve only been involved in one big-money photo law tangle. The Supremes had used thirteen of my pictures for commercial purposes after I turned down their initial offer of $250 a picture. I won a pretty big settlement.

Do you have any suggestions or advice for aspiring photographers?

Yes. Keep shooting the story of your own life, learn everything possible to know about the new digital magic, and although it’s more competitive these days than it was when I was starting, keep submitting finished picture stories to magazine and newspaper editors—this idea is the mainstay of a creative career. Unfortunately, the newspapers in Chicago offer few pages for this kind of thing. The Tribune Sunday Magazine, for example, recently turned down my coverage of 29 years at an upscale mall with a hidden camera. "Why should we run this story now?" the editor asked me. In the heyday of Life and Look, the question would be, "Are these pictures some that our readers would like to see?"

In order to capture the photographs in the exhibition, it seems like you had to have had your camera with you at all times! Was this the case?

I carry a camera about 97 percent of the time. One time, I let a Sports Illustrated writer talk me into leaving my camera at a hotel, because we were only going to a practice game by our subject in Kansas City. After fifteen minutes another player jumped our subject and began pummeling him on the floor. Just then his chubby father-in-law, about age 65, jumped the other guy. I was devastated and couldn’t even find an amateur with a camera I could use.

How many pictures have you taken in your life? What is the ratio of the shots you keep or print compared to the shots you take?

I’ve taken close to 2 million, I think. Only about 100,000 have been keepers and around 25,000 published. My new favorites are two Nelson Algren pictures that the Daiter Gallery has sold for $5,000 each.
Editor’s note: Those interested in purchasing Shay’s photographs are welcome to visit the Stephen Daiter Gallery at 311 West Superior Street in Chicago.

Did you ever think you would inspire people with your work?

Not for a moment. I did think, many times, that were I not on hand—as in a political or sports moment—that the moment would have been lost, at least the moment I saw.

How do you think Chicago has changed from the time you started photographing the city to today? Would you consider taking photographs of Maxwell Street now to compare and contrast the scene to the 1940s and ’50s?

Unlike people, a city shows its age by becoming younger, as Maxwell Street has done. I’m happier shooting new projects and putting books together than trying to match the present with the past. I’m sure some young photographer is already documenting the new Maxwell Street against the day it becomes obsolete.

When Nelson Algren lived on Wabansia Avenue, did the two of you ever go to The Hideout at 1354 W. Wabansia?

Yes, we went there occasionally. Look at my soon-to-arrive book, Chicago’s Nelson Algren, to see us in a few other hangouts.

How is digital technology changing the field of professional photography? Do you use a digital camera?

Yes, I now use three or four digital cameras, all Nikons, although I find it harder to focus through the viewing window than through a traditional viewfinder. I find that with digital cameras I always get "a" picture, but with a film camera—such as the Leicas I used through much of my career—I generally get "the" picture. I imagine digital is the future suddenly thrust on us, and it's marvelous, especially since one can zip pictures across the world quickly without losing quality. In the art world though, collectors still seem to want old fashioned fiber prints, but that is slowly changing.

Did you ever feel awkward when photographing a person or subject, such as someone in mourning or a setting that was especially private? Were you ever frustrated by the results of your efforts?

I've spent a lifetime using unobtrusive cameras, developing means of keeping a low profile while working, and using long telephoto lenses, especially for sports and crime assignments. Whenever anyone objected to my shooting pictures of a tough family situation, I respected their wishes and tried to solve my problem another way. One time, a tearful grandma who had kidnapped her granddaughter from her own drug-addicted daughter asked me, "Please, please don't photograph us." It was on a public street, and I could have made the photograph legally, but as a grandparent, I understood her feeling and didn't shoot the picture.

Early in your career, did you ever imagine that your photographs would be shown in a museum?

Nope. I always shot for publications or for myself. Early on, I egotistically felt that some of my pictures were better than some that I saw in fine-art photography magazines and on museum gallery walls, but I didn't think of myself as that kind of photographer until people began to pay me good money for my pictures. My greatest thrill occurred when the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., bought copies of my photographs of Hugh Hefner and Leo Durocher off of a gallery wall. When my daughter-the-lawyer, usually unimpressed with her old man, bubbled over with pride upon learning this, I began to pay more attention to the idea of displaying my work in a gallery or museum setting.

I loved Life magazine and have always wondered what it was like to be one of their photographers. Can you tell me a little bit about working for Life? How did editors select stories for the magazine?

The classic Life essay—perhaps eight to fifteen pages—is a lost art form. It evolved at Life and its imitators as a way of telling a story in pictures. "Pictures rhyme," said the great Life editor Ed Thompson. "And they have a mathematical factor. One plus one often equals three or more."

Time after time, Life examined an aspect of modern living through the unflinching third eyes of some of the greatest photographers that ever lived: Alfred Eisenstadt, Leonard McCombe, George Rodger, Carl Mydans, Margaret Bourke-White. Their observations in what French photographers call "les champs de bataille," the field of battle, came back to the Time-Life building as raw film edited into roll after roll of contact sheets. These small prints were edited by a great lady named Peggy Sargent. Magnifier to her weary eyes, she scanned every frame every photographer brought home. She marked some to be printed to 8x10, and others, the pictures her quixotic eye was more attracted to, as 11x14s. At editing sessions, Ed Thompson would look at a stack of prints—often a foot high—and start to pull out frames he liked. These would be slapped onto the wall marked up as two page spreads. Soon, the heart of each story would present itself. If something was missing, Thompson would either reject the story out of hand or have an editor send the photographer back, if possible, to fill the gap.

Some weeks, it went, you could win with a pair of deuces. Other weeks you couldn't win with a straight flush. Meaning, another story, perhaps one with a news angle or a last minute development, would knock your story out for a greater or timelier one. There were many vagaries to the process. For example: Thompson played out a picture I had taken of a camel that fell into a ditch at Brookfield Zoo as a full page. In trying to get up, the top of the camel looked like a huge serpent going through the grass. The title was to be: Sunken Ship of the Desert. A few minutes before press time, a picture came in from the war in Algeria. It showed a wounded baby camel being carried to safety by a North African soldier. It appeared as: Foundered Ship of the Desert, or something like that. It knocked mine out of the magazine forever. Life had done their camel picture.

How and when did you become interested in the Northbrook Court mall as a subject?

One day, in the mid 1970s, about three miles from my home in Deerfield, I noticed the scurry, flurry, and general activity involved in putting up a mall. An upscale mall in upscale territory designed, I soon learned, to lure some 10 million people a year to its shops, halls, and movie theater. As inveterate shoppers and movie goers, my wife Florence and I could hardly wait for the mall to open. Thus, I began carrying a camera under my jacket each time we visited Northbrook Court. I suggested to the mall's first owners that I, a fairly well known photojournalist, would like to do a long-term photo-documentary of the mall. They turned me down. Unless I was willing to work with two security guards and have everyone I shot sign a release, they wouldn't approve the project. This would have resulted in a series of stiff portraits, or worse, a collection of buddy-buddy images of people smiling for the camera. So I kept my Leica in my jacket and shot without looking through the viewfinder. When ownership of the mall changed, I didn't bother asking permission. I knew what the answer would be: our lawyers... At any rate, I've shot in the mall for nearly thirty years now.