Peter Bacon Hales
Professor Emeritus of Art History
About
Peter Bacon Hales was Professor Emeritus of Art History. He combined his talents in photography with studies of contemporary cultural history. He had recently returned from photographing freeways in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. His most recent book, Outside the Gates of Eden, published in 2014 by University of Chicago Press, was a history of American culture from the Cold War to today. His other six books included Silver Cities: The Photography of American Urbanization, 1839-1915, and Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project. He was a UIC faculty member for 32 years, including four years as chair of his department. He retired in 2012 and was killed on the 26th of August, 2014, when the bicycle he was riding was struck by a car outside his home town of Stone Ridge in upstate New York.