The subject of public housing, its sudden eradication, and its significance to the history of race and class issues in the U.S., though fascinating, is beyond the reach of photography. – Paul D’Amato

Following a long-term project documenting the Hispanic community in south side Chicago, in 2003 Paul D’Amato began photographing three public housing projects from the city’s near west side: Rockwell Gardens, Henry Horner, and Cabrini-Green. Please Be Free Now, which takes its title from a piece of graffiti at the Henry Horner housing project, adopts a more formal approach than his previous series. The pictures include textural studies of shattered glass and burnt dollhouses, but the portfolio is dominated by pictures of the area’s residents. These portraits are taken from a close but not intimate middle distance and feature the direct gaze of subjects who seem open yet guarded. Their expressions register somewhere between resistance and resignation, as intense and complicated as their situation.