Video: A Violent Thread

For nearly a decade, Jon Lowenstein has lived on the South Side of Chicago, where, he says, “I am consistently impressed by the residents’ deep connection to their community, as well as by the deep impact of violence on the community.” Through photography and video, Lowenstein depicts the experience of living on the South Side. He recently produced an experimental film that, he says, “deals with the impact of social violence. While the violence directly affects young African-American and Latino men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-six, the reality is that its reverberations cut across all ages and generations.”

The footage in the video below was shot on South Side between 2009 and 2013, though the images and the sound don’t always correspond. “There is power in this way of telling the story,” Lowenstein says. “The memory and daily stress of living with the threat of violence takes a toll on all of the neighborhood’s residents.”

See Lowenstein’s photos from Election Night, 2012, on Chicago’s South Side.