March 29, 2024
Features | Herald-News


Features | Herald-News

Joliet art professor archives portraits of hundreds of USF students, faculty, staff

Stephanie Zelinski (photography) and Ryan Jacobson (communications) were photographed in 2012.

JOLIET – University of St. Francis art professor Michael “Chester” Costello recently received an Illinois Arts Council Project Grant, which Costello used to hire a recent USF graduate to help archive his work, he said.

Among the photographs, documents, drawings, previously published works, blogs and journals are about 400 portraits of students, staff and faculty Costello has photographed since 2002. The majority of the subjects are ages 18 to 25, Costello said, excluding some of the staff photos.

Knowing the success many of these people have since achieved is part of Costello’s satisfaction in capturing them during their time at USF. McGraw-Hill Publishing recently hired two former students, Costello said.

“A lot of my work is documentary in vein,” Costello said.

The portraits also depict how USF student demographics have changed through the years, he added.

“Once it was predominantly white,” Costello said. “Now there is a huge Latino influence.”

The diversity extends to religion, too, at this Joliet Catholic university, he added. “I’ve got kids that are Hindu and others from the Islamic faith.”

Costello’s goal is eventually to seek essay contributions from people formerly associated with USF and combine those writings with the photographs into a book. A portrait class Costello taught soon after his tenure in 1999 inspired the portrait series, he said.

Other portraits can be viewed at alamo-costello.net/portfolio-item/university. Visit the complete archive at alamo-costello.net.

Denise  Unland

Denise M. Baran-Unland

Denise M. Baran-Unland is the features editor for The Herald-News in Joliet. She covers a variety of human interest stories. She also writes the long-time weekly tribute feature “An Extraordinary Life about local people who have died. She studied journalism at the College of St. Francis in Joliet, now the University of St. Francis.