Riveting Images of America’s Streets

There are some pictures that say too much. They utter the wretched conditions of humankind, the privations and the anguish, and the pleasures that are all the more sad for being so transient.

All of these emotions and more are mined in a new photographic exhibition at downtown Los Angeles’ Central Library that takes an unwavering voyage through the landscape of homeless people across America.

“The Way Home: Ending Homelessness in America” showcases 150 images by 13 photographers who recorded the plight of homeless men, women and children from Los Angeles to New York.

Curators Philip Brookman of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and Jane Slate Siena of the Getty Conservation Institute, said the show’s goals are to enlighten, to educate and to investigate the problems and solutions that may help its subjects secure shelter and stability.

“We wanted an exhibition that brings to life an issue that no one wants to look at, one that would have an aesthetic quality that would function as art and could be shown in an art museum,” he said in a telephone interview.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the Central Library held a town hall meeting Friday, hosted by Tipper Gore, the vice president’s wife, who is a longtime advocate for the homeless and is a contributing photographer in the exhibit. Sharon Davis, wife of Gov. Gray Davis, was the co-host.

The show--on view through Oct. 15--includes commentaries by the photographers and an essay by Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, which reaches the optimistic conclusion that homelessness is a sickness with a cure.

But the pictures speak the most eloquently.

Images like that of a group of elderly World War II veterans living in a closet in San Francisco’s Tenderloin or of homeless amputee Leonard Thompson taking a sponge bath under a Los Angeles bridge seize the viewer’s senses and refuse to let go.

Most of the pictures are in black and white, imparting a gritty documentary feeling that seems, for a split second, to expose the souls of the people captured. A few of the artists chose to use color film, giving their subjects a glistening theatricality that nonetheless draws the viewer into their stories.

There is a picture of Carrie Kuhn, who is incongruously wearing a single strand of pearls against the backdrop of a Las Vegas encampment of homeless people. The photographer, Mary Ellen Mark, captures Kuhn lip to beak with one of her pet birds, her spiky hair suspended in midair behind her, resembling the wings of the bird she clutches.

In a photograph taken by Eli Reed, the tattered blankets and pillows of a homeless person are spread out at the sidewalk entrance to a bedding store; plump mattresses lie inside, out of reach, on the other side of a picture window.

The show ran for eight weeks at the Corcoran Gallery earlier this year. Brookman said he came across one man in the gallery looking intently at photographs of homeless veterans. He was Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs Togo West, who asked how he could contact the photographer. West later sent participants who had been attending a conference on veterans issues to view the exhibit.

Curator Brookman said photographers were chosen to bring different styles to the project.

Betsy Frampton had not picked up a camera in 12 years when she sought to capture the nighttime perils of street life in Boston. In her commentary she writes: “Urban night noises--sirens, cars, other people, even scurrying rats--discombobulate the soul. What little light there is disturbs rather than soothes.”

Frampton, who had put down her camera to raise a family and pursue other goals, said she had misgivings about her involvement in the project, realizing the ease with which such pictures could condescend rather than uplift.

On several trips to Boston from her Washington, D.C., home, she carried photographs of her subjects to give to them.

“Many of them just don’t have pictures of themselves and they were very pleased, so that I found with each successive trip it became easier to establish a relationship,” she said by phone. “Doing this assignment made me realize how much I love being behind the camera. It was great satisfaction to be reacquainted with the passion.”

Pictures taken by Los Angeles Times photographer Clarence Williams captured an instant when a life was transformed. Assigned to do a photo essay about medical care for homeless people, he hooked up with outreach worker Gilbert Saldate, who had spent years trying to coax Leonard Thompson, 46, and Thompson’s companion, Kelly Martin, 38, from the squalor of life lived under a bridge, east of downtown Los Angeles.

Williams was at an Eastside welfare office as Saldate wept with emotion after helping Thompson secure the disability benefits to which he was entitled, income that led Thompson off the streets.

Living now with his 21-year-old daughter Erica and granddaughter Alize, 3, Thompson said he was both ashamed and glad when the 1998 article and photos appeared in the paper.

“I was looking at my life living in trash,” said Thompson, sitting in his daughter’s South Los Angeles home with Saldate. “But at that point I also knew things were going to change for me.”

But not for his friend Martin. Thompson has heard that she is still under the bridge.

Thompson and caseworker Saldate were invited to the exhibition’s preview opening, sharing the spotlight with dignitaries and guests. Saldate hopes the show will force individuals to confront their feelings about homeless people.

“As a kid I lived by the railroad tracks and when a [hobo] would come by the houses, someone was always ready to offer them food,” he said. “I remember the days when cars would stop to help someone on the street. But I don’t see that anymore.”