WBEZ is currently featuring Bill Healy’s photo-journalism series on Auburn Gresham.  In the introduction to the series, vivid photos of neighborhood residents — working, playing, worshipping, hanging out — accompany an audio piece with BGA’s Alden Loury discussing growing up in the South Side neighborhood.

“It gave me a firm foundation of the mix of African American life in Chicago:  it’s not completely a tale of poverty and disfunction, and not completely a tale of success and excellence,” he says.

Chicagoans tend not to distinguish South Side neighborhoods the way they do neighborhoods on the North Side, Loury says.  “But communities have character, and it’s important to give the communities an identity.”

In an interview with 848, Healy says one goal of the project is to counter that tendency: to “put a face” on the neighborhood, and to bring Auburn Gresham alive through the stories of its residents.

The first installment – the story of DJ Farley Jackmaster Funk, one of the creators of house music – is up this week, with more to come.

[Further episodes feature a local entrepreneur, a young gay man, and a teenager and his pastor.]