About
The Collection
Chicago in the Year 2000 (CITY2000), a not-for-profit enterprise funded by the Comer Foundation, Inc., created a photographic time capsule in which Chicagoans recorded a visual diary of their millennium year. The CITY2000 staff and more than 200 photographers produced 500,000 photographic negatives and approximately 500 audio and video tapes. During the project year, they presented these materials on a Web site and in exhibits mounted at locations throughout Chicago.
In 2001, Gary Comer donated the archive to the Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Comer Archive of Chicago in the Year 2000 includes the audio and visual materials and the corporate and administrative records of the project.
This Web site presents some of the images in the archive. For more information about the Comer Archive of Chicago in the Year 2000 or other photographic collections in the UIC Library, see about.
The archive
The Comer Archive of Chicago in the Year 2000 (Comer Archive of CITY2000) at the UIC University Library includes 500,000 images and 500 audio and video tapes that record the city’s activities during the millennial year. The CITY2000 photographers visited every neighborhood in Chicago during 2000, and their pictures show everyday life, special celebrations, and buildings and landscapes.
The Comer Archive contains a wealth of historical information about the cultural, ethnic, political, and social characteristics of Chicago and its people in 2000. It complements other documentary visual materials in the UIC Library, such as photographs of Chicago’s Near West Side dating from the late 1890s in the Jane Addams Memorial Collection and the James S. Parker Collection, approximately 50,000 8" x 10" black and white negatives and 850,000 35mm negatives of Chicago from the mid-19th through the 20th centuries. The University Archives has thousands of historical photographs of the University of Illinois at Chicago, covering more than 100 years of the development of the Health Sciences Center, the Chicago Undergraduate Division at Navy Pier, and the Chicago Circle Campus.
Many of the photographic images in the UIC Library’s collection are on the web site
In addition to their significant documentary value, these collections contain works of important American photographers. The photographers whose works are in the Comer Archive retain the copyrights to their photographs. For information about obtaining permission to use a CITY2000 image, contact us.
Library staff are systematically scanning CITY2000 images, providing descriptive information, and making the information available via the Internet. As of 2007, approximately 50,000 images have been digitized. The negatives, paper records, and audio and video tapes in the Comer Archive are preserved in sub-zero storage, an environment recommended for long-term preservation of photographic materials.
Digitizing, storing, and preserving the Comer Archive of Chicago in the Year 2000 has been made possible by the generous support of the Comer Science and Education Foundation. |
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