Here is a link and write up Larry's wife Joanna made up for our coming joint "Life on the Margins" Exposure Photography Festival exhibition. She is certainly a better writer than I am. Gosh I better get back into the dark and printing, only 1 month and 3 weeks or so until opening night.
Note* There are a couple of photos on the link, one of Larry's, one of mine.
"Life On The Margins"
Note* There are a couple of photos on the link, one of Larry's, one of mine.
"Life On The Margins"
Exhibition: Living on the Margins - The Manila Project / The Mae Sot Project (Part of Exposure 2015 Exhibition)
Louie Photography Gallery on 124, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (February 1 - February 28,2015)
The Manila Project: Larry Louie (Top Left Photo)
The Mae Sot Project: Gerry Yaum (Bottom Left Photo)
Since 1975, the world's population has increased from 4 billion to 7 billion, with the majority of the surge occurring in developing countries. Today, it is estimated there are more than 4 billion people living in urban centers in these countries, one quarter of them in slums and shanty towns. Lured by bright lights and promises of a better future, more and more people pour into the cities each day. Many arrive with grand dreams but end up leading marginal lives, scratching a living by doing menial tasks for subsistence wages, their families crowded into small rooms with no water, sanitation or electricity. Given these harsh realities, most envision slums as places of chaos and turmoil, overwhelmed by disease, crime and hopelessness.
Larry Louie’s Manila Project highlights the lives of the people living among the dead in Navotas Cemetery in Manila and the people living and working in the Smokey Mountain dumpsite in Tondo, Manila. Gerry Yaum’s Mae Sot Project is based on a group of Burmese refugees displaced by armed conflicts in Burma and unable to returned to their destroyed villages at home and unable to gain legal refugee status in Thailand living in the municipal garbage dump of Mae Sot, Thailand.
These photographs hopefully will bring a new understanding of modern slums. The images will shine a light on the dark side of contemporary urbanization in developing countries, helping to show that these marginal, impoverished communities are, in fact, rich with untapped potential. Generally perceived as burdens, the people of the slums should instead be recognized as a valuable resource, one that already helps power the economies of major urban centers but must be further developed to achieve its full potential. Ill-coordinated donations and other traditional modes of response to urban poverty will not solve the “problem” of slums. But a closer look at the faces of the poor, a clearer vision of the ingenuity and determination that characterize those who survive in the margins, may encourage the investments in infrastructure, education and skills development needed to more fully integrate this tremendous human potential into the global community.
