This week, I decided to search for an article pertaining to homelessness that utilized visual elements that could bring awareness to this issue. While traditional style articles can be great ways to spread the word of societal problems, I think that photographs and art forms of expression can have just as significant of an impact. The article that I found incorporated both written and visual elements and focused on photographer Lee Jeffries and his finds during his most recent trip to Miami, Florida. Jeffries describes meeting a homeless woman there who had spent most of her life in the adult film industry and after she no longer was able to do that, she spiraled into homelessness, depression, and addiction. As he states in the article “She understands what she’s doing, she understands the choices she makes. She just doesn’t see a way out. But she’s still a human being who looks out for other people, and the younger girls she stays with, often to the detriment of herself.”

The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” really holds true to the photographs that Jeffries has posted of the homeless population, both in this article and his book ‘Lost Angels’. According to the article, it is his goal as an artist to give a face and a voice to overlooked populations. He has photographed poverty stricken individuals across Europe and the US on his personal mission to raise awareness to the oftentimes ignored homeless population.

These pictures say it all, it is almost as though you can see into the soul of the people in Jeffries pictures. Although the article itself was short and to the point, the inclusion of these photographs need no words, as they tell the stories and hardships of these people without needing much description. I think that this type of photography is a great way to raise awareness of homelessness, especially for those who are uncomfortable with it and choose to ignore it in their daily lives. I think it would be impossible to not feel affected by these striking visualizations of what it truly means to be without a home and to be treated without dignity.  As the article states “His style of commercial photography, he understands, “is a small ripple” in the scope of possibility for change, “but it’s significant in terms of what one person can do.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/07/margo-stevens_n_5079048.html