Foreword by David Mamet
From Art Shay: Chicago Accent (Stephen Daiter Gallery, 2007)
I hear the Chicago accent, and I am a gone goose. Decades of living away, acting school, speech lessons, and the desire to make myself understood in a wider world are gone, and I am saying dese, dem and dose, and am back on the corner, tapping the other fellow on the forearm to make my point, and happy. Art Shay's writing, and his photos, have the Chicago accent, which may be to say he's telling you the truth as he knows it, as what right-thinking person would consider doing anything else?

I remember Algren's Chicago. I remember Algren, sitting alone, in the back at Second City, regularly. I remember the pawnshops on West Madison Street -- I used to shop there -- Sundays at Maxwell Street, and the vendors pulling on your arm, and talking in Yiddish; police headquarters at 11th and State, and getting dragged down there on this or that bogus roust when I drove a cab. And Art's photographs are so real that I reflect that it, like them, must have all occurred in Black and White.

I think it takes a realist to see the humor in things. I know it takes a realist to see the depth of tragedy. Art's work feels like the guy tapping me on the forearm.

© David Mamet