My Florence: A 70-Year Love Story

My Florence is a collection of striking moments drawn from the shared life of renowned Chicago photojournalist ART SHAY and 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 SHAY is 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.

After flying fifty-three combat missions in World War II, ART SHAY joined Life magazine as a staff reporter. He went on to become one of America's leading photojournalists. His pictures regularly appeared in Time, Fortune, the Saturday Evening Post, Forbes, Business Week, Parade and the New York Times Magazine. Shay immortalized some of America's most compelling 20th century figures, including John F. Kennedy Jr. and Muhammad Ali, along with street scenes of Chicago's dispossessed. Several of these photographs have been noted as among the most enduring American pictures ever taken. Shay lives in Chicago.

About Art Shay