About the Collection

The Chicago Photographic Collection is comprised of photographic archives of several well-known photographic firms operating in Chicago in the late nineteenth and throughout the twentieth centuries. The collection includes photographic prints and negatives documenting Chicago street scenes and architecture, Hull-House activities, and Chicago union activities and industry. Photographs and negatives in the collection are primarily from the following firms: Chicago Architectural Photographing Company, Burke and Dean, Burke and Koretke, and Kaufmann and Fabry.

The Chicago Architectural Photographing Company was organized in the 1880s to document the city's reconstruction after the Great Chicago Fire. The firm provided architects with a record of their work and other firms with architectural photographs for use in advertising, public relations, or legal records. The firm existed in its original form until the early 1970s. Burke and Dean and Burke and Koretke are the firms of Francis Burke, a news photographer who came to be closely associated with the union movement. Francis Burke did photographic work for unions throughout his career, and the firm of Burke and Dean continued following his death. The firm of Kaufmann and Fabry was another prominent architectural photography firm, known for their work as the official photographers of A Century of Progress, the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. The work of Victor Gorecki, a commercial photographer and student of Moholy Nagy at the Institute of Design, is also included in this collection.

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