In our never-ending search for the 'Perfect City' book, we optimistically scour bookstores in every market we pass through, looking for that one book - the beautifully crafted book of contemporary urban photographs, the one that is the instant classic worthy of representing the city for the citizens, not the tourists. The book that says "Welcome to your City" - the book that we can never find, and set out to create. What began as a broad on- and offline search for incredible urban images and photographers, soon turned into a hyper-focused search within the Instagram community -- a community of 400 million daily users sharing, commenting, and building their followers with daily posts of their work. While we first and foremost began by selecting great photographs, it was not lost on us that many of the photographers had Instagram followers in the 50K-200K+ range. We also realized that this is a global community with many photographers following each others' accounts and even meeting up to shoot together in their respective cities. While we expected to find a community of mostly full-time professional shooters, we discovered that the majority of photographers we were interested in worked various unrelated full-time jobs (nurse, IT consultant, a regional shoes representative, a scientist, dermatology resident, etc.). These photographers, many of whom have only been shooting for between one to four years, all have demonstrated an incredible resolve to hone their craft and work tirelessly to get the "shot.

" When you see the photographs in this collection, you quickly recognize the discipline and dedication of these young photographers, who are shooting at sunrise, sunset, in freezing Chicago winters, to capture their city with a vision that makes their city "new" again - to help us see it and experience it in a way we haven't before.