Greetings from the Holy City

“Report to the Public: An Untold Story of the Conservative Vice Lords,” a Jane Addams Hull-House Museum–sponsored exhibit located in the In These Times offices, captures the rise and fall of a North Lawndale gang paradoxically committed to community upkeep. For a companion exhibit, the Hull-House Museum recently commissioned photographer Jason Reblando to take updated photos of the West Side neighborhood, now that the original Conservative Vice Lords are gone. The result, “Greetings from the Holy City,” is a series of grim, unsparing street portraits that have become popular among a certain kind of socially conscious photographer: A boy dangles off a basketball hoop in a rundown gym, an obese family sits in sagging lawn chairs. It’s sad, and depressingly familiar, but with no directive toward change, the viewer leaves, sympathy inevitably fleeting.