PHOTO BOOTH
The view from The New Yorker’s photo department.
JANUARY 26, 2012
AMERICAN POVERTY
When I initially contacted Steve Liss about our using his photograph of a ten-year-old locked up in a Texas detention center, he was apprehensive. When I told him it was to accompany Adam Gopnik’s scathing assessment of the U.S. penal system, he was at ease. Liss’s initial caution is perfectly understandable. Not just a photographer, Liss is also the executive director and co-founder of AmericanPoverty.org, an organization established “to use visual media to raise awareness about poverty in The United States, dispel inaccurate and destructive stereotypes about poor people and encourage action to alleviate poverty.” As such, his photographs (and those of his colleagues, who include the photographers Brenda Ann Kenneally, Jon Lowenstein, Eli Reed,Stephen Shames and Danny Wilcox Frazer) represent more than a photo assignment or potential publication but an ongoing struggle to alter the perception of poverty in the U.S. In addition to documenting poverty, the organization has recently initiated a Student Leadership Program that will provide thousands of middle and high school students with the photographs, video, information and training they need to present multimedia programs, mount photographic exhibits, teach classes about the root causes of poverty to their peers, and create community action campaigns. Here’s a look at more photographs by Liss and his colleagues.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2012/01/american-poverty.html#ixzz1krqhfiFl
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