February 27, 2026
Last year, the Invisible Institute launched View from the Ground archive as a publicly accessible digital collection.
We will be sharing excerpts of reporting and photography from our archive, documenting the final chapter of Chicago’s high rise public housing, on social media. One example is The Writing on the Wall: A Love Letter which was originally published in View from the Ground on March 28, 2002. It offers a brief glimpse into the highs and lows of a relationship, preserved on the brick in Stateway Gardens.
Produced between 2001 and 2007 by our founder Jamie Kalven, photographer Patricia Evans, and technologist David Eads, View from the Ground documented life in Stateway Gardens during the Plan for Transformation—the demolition of public housing high-rises and the forced displacement of thousands of residents. From 2016 to 2019, View from the Ground was relaunched in the wake of the police murder of Laquan McDonald and the subsequent U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the Chicago Police Department.
As part of last year’s release, we made public a curated collection of more than 80 black-and-white photographs by Patricia Evans, created between 1994 and 2007 at Stateway Gardens.
Our archive relaunch has included engagement opportunities for wider audiences to view the work. We partnered with the National Museum of Public Housing to host a discussion on the 25th anniversary Plan for Transformation. We also partnered with Black Archives, an online repository celebrating Black archival photography, to bring the VFTG photos and stories to their audience. We look forward to continuing the community engagement work to share the archives online and out in the world.
View from the Ground continues as a monthly newsletter, sharing updates on our work, reflections from staff, and analysis of the evolving landscape of justice and accountability in Chicago and beyond.