30 Years Later, This Devastating Photo Series On Poverty (NSFW)

Eugene Richards’ “Below the Line” shatters the cliché imagery associated with destitution, daring viewers to look away.



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“Let’s say you’re out here, you ain’t made a dime, the first thing you hock your things. You wind up selling this, selling that, to make a rent payment. Then you’re out of the house. When you’re out of the house you’re on the street, and when you’re on the street you gotta get drunk or gotta get high. You gotta get somewhere, because you have to do something, just to get by the day.”

The image and firsthand account are one of 14 profiles in Eugene Richards’ Below the Line. The iconic project-turned-book, created 30 years ago, combines black-and-white photos and first-person recorded interviews in an attempt to understand the nuanced and harrowing story of poverty in America.



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The photo above depicts the moment Fred, recently released from prison, reunited with his former girlfriend Rose in a New York shantytown. She can be seen gazing at him while he looks fixedly through the camera lens, out at the viewer, a tear dripping down his cheek.

Unlike some of Richards’ other photographs, which feature broken down cars, deteriorating apartments and other easily legible markers of financial hardship and the wreckage it generates, this image focuses squarely on the subjects’ faces, their expressions saying more than any dilapidated environment could convey. Fred’s focused and piercing stare locks the viewer in an intense moment of eye contact. The subject seems to be asking onlookers to look squarely at the water welling up in his eyes, streaking down his face, asking them ― is this acceptable?

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More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/eugene-richards-below-the-line_us_581a3e68e4b08f9841acf08c?section=us_black-voices

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