In 2016, I began covering the protests that had been occurring in greater frequency in Chicago in response to the rise of right-wing extremism and the emergence of then candidate Donald Trump. Prior to that, I was somewhat hesitant to photograph any protests due to wishing to remaining politically neutral. However, the situation in the country started to slip into an odd place where to remain silent and inactive could mean complicity to the deterioration and destruction of civil rights that we had once thought were safe and secure. 2016 turned into 2017, and what was supposed to be just a few protests for possibly a small photo essay morphed into a full-blown long-term project over what it really means to exercise one's First Amendment Rights, and especially in such a fiery and passionate city as Chicago. In a period of four years, I had put myself in questionable and sometimes precarious situations just to make photos that I now hope will serve as a truthful record of what happened in Chicago in 2016 through 2020.
I had declared that the photographing of this project over as of January 2021. Now comes the arduous task of sifting through thousands of photographs to put together a cohesive and comprehensible visual account of those four years in printed book form.
