“Down and Out in the South” is a portrait series of homeless men and women who I encountered in South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi in 2010 and 2011. The project started in September 2010, when 701 Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Columbia, S.C. (U.S.) invited me as an artist-in-residence. A board member of the CCA suggested homelessness as a possible subject matter for me to explore through photography during this residency. Initially, I was skeptical because society’s outcasts have been photographed very often, and I worried that I had little to contribute to existing images. However, after some consideration, I came up with a different approach: to photograph people who are homeless as I would photograph any other member of society. That implied not scouting out the most picturesque people I could find, with beards and hats, and leaving out the typical paraphernalia, such as shopping carts and sleeping bags. My approach also implied not photographing them in dramatizing black and white — imagery so often associated with portraits of homelessness. Instead of presenting them as The Other, and thus, by default, different from us, I wanted to photograph them in a studio setting, against a neutral backdrop, focusing on their individuality rather than on stereotypes. In essence, I want to show who they are rather than what they are labeled.
I set up a makeshift studio in offices and rooms in organizations that serve homeless people in Columbia, S.C., Atlanta, Ga., and the Mississippi Delta. I felt that the choice of three different habitats – a medium-sized city, the Southern metropolis and a few rural towns – in three different Southern states would result in a fair degree of representation of homelessness in the U.S. South. In total, I photographed approximately 100 homeless men and women. Of these, 42 portraits were selected for this book.
Jan Banning
Jan Banning made also some recordings, you can listen to them here http://www.janbanning.com/gallery/down-and-out-in-the-south/#interviews
EXHIBITION
. Until January 4, 2014
425 Peachtree Hills Ave NE #25
Atlanta, GA 30305
USA
. From January 16th to March 2nd, 2014
701 Whaley St
Columbia, SC 29201
USA
BOOK
Jan Banning
Down and Out in the South
text: James Swift
Design: Peter Jonker
ISBN 978-90-77386-09-5
96 pages, Hardcover, 235mm x 320mm (9.25 x 12.6 inches)
+ ‘Giveaway Edition’, 8 pages,
320mm x 470mm (12.6 x 18.5 inches)
order at www.janbanning.com
