exhibitions

Museum of contemporary photography

In response to Birmingham, Alabama, 1963: Dawoud Bey/Black Star, this exhibition presents powerful photographic and film works by Carlos Javier Ortiz and David Schalliol from the MoCP’s permanent collection and Midwest Photographers Project. Through deeply personal narratives, both artists confront systemic racism and structural inequities embedded in Chicago’s urban landscape and beyond. Ortiz’s projects A Thousand Midnights and We All We Got examine the enduring impact of the Great Migration and the cyclical nature of violence and poverty through the lives of Black youth and families. Schalliol’s The Area and related photographs document the human cost of displacement in Englewood, revealing how development and policy erase Black communities. Together, their work offers a layered meditation on place, power, and resistance.

Jun 23 – Sep 9, 2023
Firebird Community Arts, Lookingglass Theatre Company, Jennifer Nagle Myers, Carlos Javier Ortiz, Jefferson Pinder
DISARM Everyday Violence, Every Day is presented in partnership with Firebird Community Arts and Gun Violence Prevention PAC (G-PAC). DISARM Everyday Violence, Every Day, installation views at Weinberg/Newton Gallery, 2023; photography by Evan Jenkins

Carlos Javier Ortiz: A Thousand Midnights
Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago 2016
A Thousand Midnights is a 12-minute film and photography installation by Carlos Javier Ortiz that traces the legacy of the Great Migration through the personal stories of African Americans who moved from the rural South to cities like Chicago. This evocative work weaves together intimate portraits, archival footage, and landscapes to explore how the migration shaped modern American urban life.
Presented at the Logan Center for the Arts, the project situates individual family narratives within broader historical movements, examining themes of displacement, resilience, and belonging. Ortiz’s lyrical visual approach underscores the emotional gravity of Black migration and its imprint on the cultural and physical architecture of cities. A Thousand Midnights stands as a meditation on movement, memory, and the making of place.

Carlos Javier Ortiz: We All We Got
Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago 2016
Following its debut at the Bronx Documentary Center, We All We Got by Carlos Javier Ortiz was presented at the Logan Center for the Arts in Chicago. This multimedia exhibition investigates the consequences of gun violence on American youth through documentary photography, short films, and text. Drawing from years of work embedded in communities across Chicago and beyond, Ortiz offers an intimate and unflinching look at the cycles of trauma, systemic neglect, and the enduring strength of families affected by violence.
By centering the voices and lived experiences of young people, We All We Got challenges audiences to engage with the realities of loss, resistance, and the urgent need for social justice in America’s urban landscape.

We All We Got October 10th, 2014 - January 5th, 2015
Explores the consequences and devastation of youth violence in contemporary America from 2006 to 2013, through a mix of powerful photographs, incisive essays, and moving letters from diverse individuals affected by this perennial scourge. Carlos Javier Ortiz’s work provides an avenue for knowing these children and their families. This work is not the end of the conversation about youth violence and society’s complicity in it, but rather the beginning. The terror in the eyes of grieving children and inconsolable mothers only allows the viewer to begin to understand the toll that this reality takes on the children who live it.