Shooter for hire

     When you cover a swirling, four-day story like a national convention, it helps to have a home base. Since the newspaper didn't send me to Cleveland until the last minute, I couldn't get into the press center, and had to improvise. That involved setting up shop at Johnny's Little Bar, which was ideal for several reasons: it was only a couple blocks off Public Square, they would charge my phone for me behind the bar, and the burgers were pretty good. 
    It did get crowded, and I would slip upstairs to the empty banquet room, where I met Noah Brooks, a freelance photographer from Florida. We got to talking. There is an enormous gulf between those of us lucky enough to still be on the staffs of what remains of the great news organizations, and everybody else, in the slurry, fighting to find work and to be paid. He was on his laptop, trying to find somebody interested in his photos, trying to find somebody to toss $50 his way.
     He showed me some photos he took in Ukraine during two recent trips there. If they seem

Noah Brooks

unusually artistic, that was his goal. "I was really looking for two things: art and war," he told the Ukrainian Chicago Magazine.  
     I wanted to help him get his work seen, and told him if he sent me a few photographs, I would put them up on my blog, for what it's worth. He did, and here they are. He's hoping to go back to Ukraine in September, and could use a few connections who might be interested in working with him. 
    I don't get the sense that the photo editors of the top press organizations are reading my blog. But you might know somebody, or be involved with a social agency that needs dramatic photographs of war situations, or be involved in one of Chicago's many cultural or artistic organizations that could use his work. If so, I've got just the guy for you. He can be reached at noahbrooks99@gmail.com.