Explore photos from Chicago's World's Fairs in the exhibit Official and Unofficial: Photographs from the World’s Columbian Exposition and Century of Progress. The exhibit runs until March 2 in the Special Collections Exhibit Hall on the 9th floor of the Harold Washington Library Center.
Official photographers were hired to shoot the World’s Fairs of 1893 and 1933, most notably Charles Dudley Arnold in 1893 and the firm of Kaufmann and Fabry in 1933. Spectators also made photographs with their Kodak Brownie cameras or other hand-held cameras, capturing unique, personal scenes of the fairs. This exhibit presents photographs from both arenas: corporate visions and visitors’ individual views of the fairs.
