In the tight rowhouse streets of North Philadelphia, people share walls and worries. Few outsiders see, know or feel the cycle of want and chaos that a week of privation creates. To show what life north of Spring Garden Street looks like to some of the people who live there, Mariana Chilton, a professor and anthropologist at Drexel University’s School of Public Health, gave digital cameras to 40 women. Out of a simple idea, complex images and narratives emerge. An exhibit of the photos, called Witnesses to Hunger, will open to the public Dec. 11 at Drexel’s Bossone Center. The women aimed their cameras at precious children and faithless lovers, falling-down apartments and asthma nebulizers.
Witness to Their Own Lives
In the tight rowhouse streets of North Philadelphia, people share walls and worries. Few outsiders see, know or feel the cycle of want and chaos that a week of privation creates. To show what life north of Spring Garden Street looks like to some of the people who live there, Mariana Chilton, a professor and anthropologist at Drexel University’s School of Public Health, gave digital cameras to 40 women. Out of a simple idea, complex images and narratives emerge. An exhibit of the photos, called Witnesses to Hunger, will open to the public Dec. 11 at Drexel’s Bossone Center. The women aimed their cameras at precious children and faithless lovers, falling-down apartments and asthma nebulizers.
