Here’s a new saga for the annals of runaway boards and crusty founders:Legendary photography mentor Richard Stromberg has been fired by the board of the Chicago Photography Center, the organization created just six years ago mostly to make sure there’d always be a place where he could teach. Stromberg says he’s been locked out of the handsome, $1.2 million Lincoln Avenue facility financed by his supporters, outfitted with his own darkroom equipment, and built, in part, with his labor. Last month, in response to the firing and an alleged lack of democratic process, about two dozen members of the CPC’s seasoned volunteer workforce walked out, leaving the board scrambling to cover fall classes and labs that were already under way.
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For his part, Stromberg cites “philosophical differences”—which, in this case, really seem to exist. The “mostly new” board “wanted [the CPC] to be a school,” Stromberg says, “while I wanted it to be what it has been: a community center.” Tension had been building for a while, he notes, but things began seriously to unravel in August, after the board presented him with a description “for a job I had no interest in” and followed it up with a “poor evaluation” for “a job that was not the job I was doing.” Stromberg—whose strength is teaching, and whose title was program director—says he was being slotted as an administrator and limited to a single class. He was also advised to mind his “attire and hygiene.”
Stromberg started his innovative program at the Jane Addams Center, on Broadway near Belmont, in 1969, and that was its home for the next 33 years. During that time, thousands of local photography students were exposed to his tough-love brand of education, which generally either sent them running or turned them into intensely loyal followers. After Hull House sold the building in 2002, without making what Stromberg thought would be adequate plans for relocating the photography studio, he moved to a commercial condominium at 3301 N. Lincoln that was ultimately purchased by a pool of investors he recruited—mostly friends and former students. About 25 of them chipped in toward the $360,000 down payment and are due to be bought out in three years. Stromberg says one ongoing point of contention he had with the board—which operates independently of the investors and appoints its own members—was its failure to set up a fund specifically dedicated to repaying that debt. He says they needed to be putting away $8,000 each month.
Rudich also maintains that the board couldn’t agree to everything the volunteers demanded within their two-day time frame, in part because of IRS concerns. “We responded with a list of things we agreed to and things we needed to talk about. They said that wasn’t enough, and that they would walk off the job. And they did, leaving students without lab instructors.” He also says “there’s a plan” for paying back investors and that the job description that offended Stromberg was meant only as a starting point for discussion. “We said, ‘Meet with us, tell us what you like and what you don’t like.’ He’s never told us.” Rudich claims the board “never stopped being willing to talk to Richard, even now.”
