"Messenger" Exhibition Opening Friday 1/10/2020

In the mid-nineties, when this project was shot over a two year period, the bike messenger was a common everyday fixture of the urban experience, a flesh and blood system of communication in a pre-internet world.

Although the familiar association the casual observer had of the messenger was one of perilous motion flitting through traffic, with a blasé disregard for its rules or conventions, La Prairie decided to approach it from the static convention of the portrait- he felt it was like asking anarchy to stand still for a moment and comb its hair.

He adopted the conventionality of the square format portrait because of its contrast in presenting fluid energy in repose, as well as the square’s challenge of presenting the messenger’s natural environment; the urban landscape.

Discussion 7pm with Dean La Prairie, Short Film Screening Concrete Rodeo from Chip Williams, and The Gig Economy Then and Now with Ashley Baber, PhD candidate in the sociology department at Loyola University Chicago. Her research interests include: inequality, urban sociology, political sociology, labor markets, the gig economy and the political economy of urban education. Her dissertation research focuses on how cities regulate gig industries and how these regulations go on to shape the local labor market. Ashley has published work on funding inequality across Chicago Public Schools, charter school expansion and public school closures in Chicago and the “sharing economy.” Ashley has taught courses on inequality in the United States at Loyola University and a course on inequality in Chicago for the Black Male Leadership Academy at Roosevelt University. She has received several awards including outstanding graduate instructor and outstanding service to the sociology department.