My Florence: A 70-Year Love Story [Paperback]

My Florenceis a collection of striking moments drawn from the shared life of renowned Chicago photojournalistART SHAYand his beloved wife, Florence. By turns casual and glamorous, pensive and humorous, the photographs start the day Art and Florence met in 1942, as 20-year-old camp counselors in the Catskill Mountains, and continue for seven decades.

Former LIFE, Fortune, Time, and Sports Illustrator photographer,ART SHAYis famous for immortalizing some of America's most compelling 20th century figures, including John F. Kennedy Jr., Muhammad Ali, and Eleanor Roosevelt. But the story of Florence was Shay's constant beat. The result is a story that runs deep and reads as a call to joy and source of inspiration for lovers, family, friends, and the photographer in us all. Florence Shay was a force to be reckoned with, a marvelous, witty, beautiful and well-read lady whose husband Art loved her very much and took some pictures of her that pierce my heart: there she is, glorious Florence. I miss her (and her book shop, too). Art Shay’s photographs bring us into their family, so immediately and warmly that it is a little shocking and quite wonderful. —Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife

The photographs in Shay’s latest collection portray his late wife’s brimming effervescence in . . . [a] spirit of reverence and love —Amy Danzer,New City

In 'My Florence' we encounter her pregnant with her first child, and later beaming proudly with their baby daughter Jane in her arms. We see her bringing home their youngest, Steve, greeted by three of their four children at home. . . . [I]t seems that for Art Shay the past really is prologue and continues to be present in the life of this prolific, insightful photographer. —Dorothy Andries,Chicago Tribune

The golden age of photojournalism may be long past, but the work of itsl–