Heartbreaking....Life Below the Poverty Line in Troy, New York....pics
Last edited Thu Jul 17, 2014, 04:38 PM - Edit history (1)
Brenda Ann Kenneally takes photographs, but to call her a photographer isn’t quite accurate. She prefers the term “digital folk artist,” and when you hear how she interacts with her subjects—families living below the poverty line in Troy, New York—and tells their stories, it seems an apt description. Kenneally doesn’t simply create media, she curates it: She collects family photo albums, school and medical records, letters from prison, scrapbooks, and even screenshots from Facebook. Since she began her project, “Upstate Girls,” more than 10 years ago, she’s amassed thousands of photos, several terabytes of video, and scores of other documents. “If you're doing documentary, you need to be the foremost authority on whatever you're doing. I don't know anything about almost everything; there are so many things to know now. But I know some stuff about these couple places, and you have to want to share that,” she said. “The pictures are just a way to remind me about what I've learned. No longer do I care about having pictures in a frame on the wall.”
Kenneally lived in Troy, a city 140 miles north of Manhattan, and surrounding cities on and off as a child and teen. She left for good at the age of 17 after a young pregnancy and abortion, problems with drugs and the legal system, and time living in group homes. After getting sober, she studied photojournalism and sociology at the University of Miami. After graduation, she moved to Brooklyn and began photographing her neighbors’ struggles with poverty and drugs. She was in Troy on an assignment for the New York Times Magazine in 2002 when she met her first subject, Kayla, who later invited her to photograph the birth of her son. Beginning in 2004, Kenneally started visiting Troy regularly and began documenting the lives of seven women who lived near Kayla. “To go back there was like revisiting my own culture in a very real way,” Kenneally said.
Troy thrived during the Civil War, when the success of its steel processing plants served as an example of the industrialization of the United States. Shirt, collar, and textile production also boomed there. But today, Troy is a city with serious social issues: According to a report released by the New York State Community Action Association in 2010, 21.4 percent of residents in Troy live in poverty, and about 70 percent of poor families are headed by a single mother. “I have dedicated my life to exploring the how and why of class inequity in America. I am concerned with the internalized social messages that will live on for generations after our economic and social policies catch up with the reality of living on the bottom rung of America’s upwardly mobile society,” Kenneally said in a statement about her work. “My project explores the way that money is but a symptom of self-worth and a means by which humans separate from each other. Poverty is an emotional (rather than simply) physical state with layers of marginalization that cements those who live under them into place.”
Since Kenneally started her project, many of her subjects have had children and new lovers, and she has begun documenting their lives as well. She hopes to provide some sense of closure to the project soon, but not before releasing a nonlinear Web documentary feature on her subjects and a “photographic novel” in several parts. On the other hand, Kenneally feels her project will continue indefinitely. “I never feel I could stop. I feel like I should be there right now,” she said.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/07/17/brenda_ann_kenneally_documents_life_below_the_poverty_line_in_troy_york.html
Kayla and Tony, 2006. When Heather (left) started dating Kayla, she helped take care of her son, Tony.
Robert, 2013. Kenneally met Kayla’s brother, Robert, in 2004 when he was living at the Children’s Home of Kingston. He now has two sons by two different mothers. He’s pictured here with his son, Logan.
Destiny and Deanna Pretending to Smoke, 2008. When the girls’ mother came home from work at the Hess convenience store, the girls would often pamper her by bringing her soda, taking her shoes off, and running to the kitchen to light her a cigarette from the stove.
Heather and Her Daughter Jada, 2010. Heather and Kayla lived together for two years until Heather had a one-night stand with a boy that both she and Kayla knew. Heather was forced to give the baby up to her mother.
more pics at link.
edited to add captions to the pictures
= new reply since forum marked as read
Last edited Thu Jul 17, 2014, 05:06 PM - Edit history (1)
Since you threw that out as the first post, it seems you at least must have found this observation obvious.
In New York state, the cost of a 1 pack a day habit is 70% of federal poverty level income for a family of two.
To say it another way, a couple living at the poverty level who each have a 1 pack a day habit spend 70% of their gross annual income on cigarettes.
It is apparent that the help that the individuals in the album get is ineffective and the outcomes tragic.
The photo album from which these images are taken is... shocking. Setting aside the financial costs of smoking there is also the medical costs. The little guy on the left with the nebulizer is the same kid being held by his mom Kayla in the OP.
Not sure if he still smokes, but seriously would ANYONE ever ask a question like that?
I was that kid.
Just because you're poor doesn't mean shitty choices are what is expected.
I don't know if that photo album makes me more depressed or angry.
Incredible response.
Pure truth.
BULLS-EYE!
At first I was all irritated that anyone would dare question a poor person's choice to smoke but at those prices its an eye opener for sure and it does make you wonder. ..
That's a hell of a lot of money going up in smoke for the average poor person/family. ...
(state tax alone is $4.35 per pack)
and posit that it probably represents a nontrivial percentage of their "below the poverty line" household income. Probably more than half.
Something else we know?
It is seriously fucked up if mom's pride is the overriding concern.
... and a series of live-in partners, all of whom apparently smoke. I'm using the household provided by the OP as an example, not creating a hypothetical.
Downthread it is noted that poor people are still poor, even if they don't smoke. This may be true, but in New York State, a 100% of fpl household that quits smoking has three times the disposable income that they had previously. Enough savings to heat the home in which their children live.
A one pack a day habit costs a person in NY state nearly $30 daily. Averaged over a year, heating oil costs $8.
Yes, I would begrudge a person this "vice"/"simple pleasure"/"luxury" if it makes the difference between feeding their kids and not.
And I agree, for cost reasons if nothing else, I would expect consumption to be less than a pack a day, but the photo album suggests that it is pervasive and ubiquitous.
I shouldn't be so heartless as to deny people their addictions.
I get that addictions are powerful. What I don't get is that I shouldn't place any value judgments on the addiction itself; I shouldn't criticize addictions that compel people to prioritize it over nutrition or heat.
Okay, I'm judging. I think that addictions are suboptimal ways to spend scarce resources, and when public funds are the source of those poverty-level incomes, I think that we should rethink the delivery mechanism to help assure that the help is achieving its intended purpose; nutrition, shelter, education.
Secondarily, I think more needs to be done to assure that the beneficiaries have the skills, tools and education to make reasonable choices... including more resources to quit addictions.
Failing that, I think they shouldn't be insulated from the consequences.
It's so predictable
Albeit perhaps better-fed ones.
heartbreaking......
Response to one_voice (Original post)
Robert, I'm just going to give our viewers a quick run-through of what items poor families in America have. Ninety-nine percent of them have a refrigerator. Eighty-one percent have a microwave. Seventy-eight percent have air conditioning. Sixty-three percent have cable TV. Fifty-four percent have cell phones. Forty-eight percent have a coffee maker -- I'm not surprised, they're only about 10 bucks. Thirty-eight percent have a computer. Thirty-two percent have more than two TVs. Twenty-five percent have a dishwasher.
This, Sir, Mr. Rector, is very different what it was just a few years ago, isn't it?
ROBERT RECTOR (Heritage Foundation senior research fellow): No, actually what you see is that the living standards of the poor have increased rather steadily for the last 30 years. And in fact, the poverty report has not accurately reflected their living conditions really for several decades.
VARNEY: Now, I understand that today, the federal government says 14 percent of the population lives in poverty, and that's roughly the same as it was back in 1966, before all the Great Society programs. But doesn't that look poverty as a financial, a monetary thing?
RECTOR: Yes, part of the reason that when you look at the actual living conditions of the 43 million people that the Census says are poor, you see that in fact, they have all these modern conveniences. If you ask them, did your family have enough food to eat at all times during the last year, the overwhelming majority will say yes. If you ask them were you able to meet any medical needs you may have had, they will say yes.
The typical poor family in the United States lives in a house or an apartment and actually has more living space than the average European. Not a poor European, but the average Frenchman or the average German.
So, in fact, there really isn't any connection between the government's identification of poor people and the actual living standards and the typical American -- when an American hears the word "poverty," he's thinking about somebody that doesn't have enough food to eat, someone that's possibly homeless. It's not true. [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, 7/19/11]
http://mediamatters.org/research/2011/07/22/fox-cites-ownership-of-appliances-to-downplay-h/148574
So they can't be that poor!
IMO, Lumberjack got utterly plowed-under by your simple statements of truth.
That sounds like quite practical social-eezum to me.
We need non-punitive solutions to separate, by behavior, the many that can be helped,
from the relatively few who may be "hopeless" (i.e. those who chronically make bad choices).
You have to give people a chance to choose the right thing, so they can dignify themselves,
in order to start the process of really being helped, and striving to improve.
But someday, HUGE MOBS of these people will burn rich people alive, hang them from lampposts,
shoot them down like dogs, etc etc etc
Think of Madame LaFarge from "A Tale Of Two Cities".
Resolute, unblinking, utterly devoid of mercy, relentless.
This is after decades of being beaten-down.
Bob Dylan said, "...stare into the vacuum of his [her] eyes".
An astonishing desire for cruelty is surely being built up in those ragged hearts and minds.
Just look at historical France, Russia, and other revolutions as well.
I would never do or approve of such things myself, nor would anyone I know.
But thankfully, I am not crushed by poverty, so I could still be reasonable, even with my perceived oppressors.
But the "primitivizing" of mass-numbers of people via poverty imposed by the wealthy and powerful,
virtually guarantees that the mass-mobs to arise in the future will be extra-brutal and cruel to their
oppressors.
And that time will certainly come, eventually.
There's no escaping it, IMO.
I may not live long-enough to see it.
And maybe that's OK.
It's gonna' be U-GLY.
