Unseen America Fort Worth

Thanks to everyone for their kind words after reading the story in the Star Telegram. If you haven’t read the story, here is a link: http://www.star-telegram.com/229/story/650819.html

As a result of the newspaper story, we have had two of the subjects from photographs in the show ask that their images not be used. Out of respect, we have removed those photographs and are exchanging them for two other images. It was never our intention to embarass or upset anyone, and we send out our sincerest apologies to those who were troubled. The sole intention of this program is enabling the photographers to shed light on the challenges and difficulties of the homeless community in Fort Worth. By making this community visible our goal is to help demand the restoration of opportunities that are sometimes denied its members. None of the images chosen for the show were exploitative in any way, and instead were specifically selected to show the inherent dignity and value of human life, homeless or otherwise.

Unseen Fort Worth is a new program this year, combining the efforts of the Department of Veteran’s Affairs’ Fort Worth Homeless Veterans Program, Tarrant County Access and the Metrognome Collective. These three organizations, with support from The Bread and Roses Cultural Project, provided seven U.S. veterans, who had been through the Homeless Veterans Program with digital cameras, access to a computer lab, an online photo account and 14 weeks of instruction in the art of photography.

Unseen America is a national photographic project, created by the Bread and Roses Cultural Project in which cameras are given to disenfranchised people with limited public voice and visibility. The goal of the project is to use photography as a window into the individual experiences of men and women who work and live under difficult conditions. This is the first year Fort Worth has hosted the program, and the first time the program has focused specifically on homeless veterans.

The project has culminated in a public gallery show, co-sponsored by the Fort Worth Public Library at their Central Branch, 500 W. Third Street, in the heart of downtown Fort Worth. The show will be hanging in the library’s upstairs West Gallery from Wednesday, May 14 to Wednesday, June 18 during library hours. The gallery show is dedicated to photography student Michael Ellis, who passed away just two weeks before the completion of the class.

Works by Ellis, along with works by Lawrence Douglass, Ruben Lopez, Rachel Robinson, Michelangelo Williams and Victor Williams include photographs of a number of iconic Fort Worth landmarks, but also images of a hidden Fort Worth, largely located east of downtown in Fort Worth’s Near East Side. This neighborhood, separated from downtown by only a pair of stop signs, is home to a large percentage of Fort Worth’s 4,000 homeless men and women. It is also home to the V.A., Tarrant County Access, Presbyterian Night Shelter, Union Gospel Mission, the Day Resource Center, Feed by Grace, and was formerly the home of the Metrognome Collective.

There will be a public reception at the library 6 -8 p.m. Thursday, May 29. Photographs from the show will be available for sale, and all proceeds will go directly to the photographers. The photographers will be on hand to discuss their work. The Unseen Fort Worth program will be continued in the fall, with an advanced class for the graduates, and another introductory class for a new round of students. A photography book of the work from the initial class will be available for sale, and proceeds from the book will help fund the next round of classes.

Please come to show your support for these brave men and women who have struggled to overcome so much, and who have kept their creative fire alive despite great adversity.