Untitled

While a student at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Ray Martin produced a series of photographs of local storefront churches. These religious spaces, deeply connected to and reflective of the diversity and unique character of their communities, proliferated in Chicago during and in the years following the Great Migration of 1915–70, when millions of African Americans fled the rural south. Many such churches occupied former commercial spaces in impoverished neighborhoods and were typically short-lived; some were able to relocate to permanent homes, but more often they fell prey to the surrounding economic conditions. Storefront churches remain ubiquitous in Chicago, where they are still seen as pillars of their communities.