What I Carry Show about Homelessness in Portland
Readers:
For those living in and around the Portland area, I want to alert you to an extraordinary photographic and literary event exploring the lives of homeless people in the city. It’s called what I carry and it will run from January 18th to March 15th in the third floor gallery of the Central Branch of the Multnomah County Library in downtown Portland. The opening reception is Saturday, January 18th, from 2-4, and I encourage everyone to attend and see this show and support the artist, my friend Jim Lommasson. For more information on the show, see below:
what i carry
A collaborative photo+writing storytelling project with Portland’s Street Community
Since 2010, I have dedicated my work to collaborative projects with communities displaced from their homes and their their homelands. These projects encompass the stories of refugees, genocide, and Holocaust survivors who bear the burdens of the diaspora.
My “What We Carried” projects delve into themes of departure and the enduring impact it leaves behind. Each project deepens my connection with the communities with whom I collaborate. what i carry focuses on Portland’s unhoused community.
This project with the unsheltered members of our community aims to remind us of our shared humanity. It serves as a poignant reminder that any of us could find ourselves in need of shelter, should one or two circumstances in our lives shift.
Through this process of personal storytelling with object/photographs with the participants’ handwriting, giving voice to the those who are rarely heard we aspire to build a sense of community and remind us that we are all one family.
It’s been said that my What We Carried projects “humanize” the refugee. But it’s not the refugee (or the homeless person) that needs to be humanized…
…it is us.
– Jim Lommasson