No Place To Call Home
Virginia Allyn | New York, United States
Photographer: Virginia Allyn
Exhibit Title: No Place To Call Home
Location: New York, United States
It can happen to anyone they say. On the streets of New York City homelessness happens to over 55,000 persons each day. The greatest number since the Great Depression. Who are some among those 55,000 and what are their stories?
"My mom left me when I was two years old. My father left me when I was twelve. I've been homeless since the age of twelve," Robert offers in an alley on the Bowery. Olivia is in a shelter for the second time around. She is there with one of her four children. Two and one half years after re-entry she is still there. Mary, aka Epiaphany, has been homeless since her mother died when she was all of a 15 years old. To survive she prostitutes herself to have a roof over her head if only for a night. So many stories, so many more stories. And as cities face ever tightening budgets, programs that helped those in dire straights no longer exist making circumstances for those without a home all the more challenging and all the more desperate.
I worked in the field of social services for over ten years. Homelessness is ofen a subject told by numbers but without a face. I set out to interview and photograph persons here in New York City who have their own unique circumstances that brought them to homelessness and their own unique stories living it.
The Coalition for the Homeless
Virginia Allyn
101 Lafayette Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11217
718 422 7977
manyvoices2@verizon.net
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