Richard Cahan
Nonfiction
Evanston, IL
BiRichard Cahan is a journalist whose work spans many disciplines. He has written more than twenty books and has worked as a photojournalist. He served as the picture editor of the Chicago Sun-Times for sixteen years. He left in 1999 to create and direct of a team of 200 photographers and writers to document Chicago during the year 2000. Material gathered in the project, called CITY (Chicago In The Year) 2000, was shown in museums across the world. The work is now stored at the University of Illinois Chicago so that people in the far future will understand life in the millennial year. Since then, he has worked as a program officer for the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and as an independent scholar for the Newberry Library. Since then, he has co-authored three books about Richard Nickel, the Chicago architectural photographer and pioneering preservationist who died in the demolition of the Chicago Stock Exchange Building. He is also the co-author of two books about the Chicago photographer Vivian Maier, whose photographs taken during her life as a nanny have become an international sensation. He has also written books about law, history, design, architecture, photojournalism, and baseball. Born and raised in the Chicago area, he graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and has produced photo exhibitions at many museums. In 2021, he started working as a photojournalist for the Evanston RoundTable. He lives in Evanston with his wife, Cate, near their four children and five grandchildren.