“Privilege, if you’re very strict, is an immoral and unjust thing to have, but if you’ve got it you didn’t choose to get it and you might as well use it. You’re privileged … but you know you’re under an obligation to repay what’s been put into you.”
– Walker Evans
Ongoing projects include photography workshops with the homeless in Los Angeles, kids living in urban poverty in East Africa, and the documentation of Intangible Cultural Heritage visual and performance artists in rural China.
Contact One of Us Project
Street girl, at a rescue center in Nairobi, Kenya 1993
Origin story…
The One of Us name represents work done on behalf of or in collaboration with members of so-called “marginalized” communities. The photography and writing started with eight years in East and Central Africa documenting the lives of street children, the urban poor, refugees, rural villagers and others. Blumenkrantz ran the information department for InterAid International for four years, and later freelanced for Kenyan media, taught workshops for various groups in East Africa and the Horn, and eventually supervised the information department at the Undugu Society of Kenya.
“David played an active role in bringing hope and rejuvenating the societies’ resilience through his photos and articles that always sought to bring out the best side of the situation, desperate as it was. This was the case regarding his work with Undugu Society of Kenya, the pioneering human rights organization focused on street children and the urban poor. It is through David’s strong images of the situation in the Kenyan streets that Undugu was able to get then-Mayor of Nairobi Magic Mwangi to initiate the ‘Nairobi Cares for Its Children’ project, a ground-breaking advocacy and response intervention that brought to the fore the situation of the street families
and provided relief, rescue, education and the reintegration of
thousands of street children.”
* John Muiruri, Executive Director, Action for Children in Conflict
An ongoing concern and interest in creating both environmental portraits and candid images of the lives of the homeless really began in the 1990s, and it was through contact with the San Fernando Valley Rescue Mission, with whom my documentary photography students and I had been collaborating with regularly, that we conceptualized the “One of Us” project. In light of the fact that in spite of decades of excellent photographic representations of the homeless in Los Angeles the problem has only continued to get worse, in the summer of 2016 we began the first phase of One of Us. The objective was simply to “change the conversation” about homelessness by providing a platform for self-representation. This entailed visiting four locations where showers, breakfast, medical care and other services are being provided. Working with a student assistant, we set up a portable studio on site, and engaged anyone interested in sitting for a portrait and sharing their thoughts in a recorded interview session. We ended up with more than 40 participants, all of whom became part of the One of Us exhibition, held at the Museum of Social Justice in Los Angeles in 2018.
Brooke Carrillo was one of the original One of Us participants. She continues her homeless activism in the West San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. (Read Brooke’s story here)
Lelund Hollins: How He Sees It
From there, it was a natural progression to the How We See It participatory photography workshop, which brought together university students and members of the homeless community, at the St. Charles Borromeo Church’s Holy Family Service Center in North Hollywood, which resulted in another exhibition at the Museum of Social Justice in early 2020.
The project was derailed in March 2020 when the Covid pandemic struck . . .
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Yunnan Province, China 2018
