Panel discussion: Photography and Homelessness.
Participants will include photographers Patti
Gower, Goran
Petkovski and Ryan Carter, and former Tent City
residents Boni
and Marty Lang.
May 3 at 7pm in the Music Room, Hart House, U of
T.

David Barker Maltby’s photographs illustrate the
ofteninvisible
existence of those excluded from the promises of
global culture – the homeless. Unable or unwilling
to conform
to its codes, they form urban communities
scavenged
from the garbage of consumer society and based
on shared
needs for sustenance, security and
companionship. Many
come to large cities from declining towns to find
social safety
nets dismantled, becoming the human cost of
government
policies prioritizing “fiscal responsibility.” As a
documentary
photographer, equally dedicated to social activist
ideals,
Maltby worked with his subjects over periods of
months
or years, sharing the same living conditions and
following
the same difficult struggle of their daily routine.
Overall, his
work portrays a complex shadow world with its
own social
structure, based as much on values of
compassion and caring
as on the negative qualities with which it is often
associated.
David Barker Maltby died at the age of 38 from
meningitis.

Curated by Ethan Eisenberg and Susan Maltby