Faces of Homelessness

Homelessness takes many forms beyond liv­ing on the streets. Factors besides mental illness and addiction contribute to the prob­lem. There are homeless veterans; families who were evicted when their residences were foreclosed on; people with sudden medical expenses that insurance didn’t cover. Job loss, divorce, death of a spouse or parent, domestic violence, discrimination based on sexual ori­entation, lack of affordable housing, etc., all drive homelessness. There are working poor who live in vehicles or tents and work full­-time jobs. Most people experiencing homelessness are invisible, living doubled up with friends or family, in shelters, hospitals or Single Room Occupancy hotels. Jeffrey Wolin photographs and interviews a wide swath of this vulnerable population and includes their own words directly on their por­traits to dispel our firmly-­held stereotypes.

Jeffrey A. Wolin is Ruth N. Halls Professor Emeritus of Photography at Indiana University. Wolin’s photographs have been exhibited in over 100 exhibitions in the US and Europe, including solo shows at the Art Institute of Chicago, International Center of Photography in New York, George Eastman Museum in Rochester and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and group exhibitions at MoMA, Whitney Museum, and LA County Museum of Art.

His photographs are in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the George Eastman Museum, Rochester; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Wolin is the recipient of two Visual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is represented by Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago.


Christoph Irmscher has taught at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Harvard University, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Since 2006, he has been at Indiana University of Bloomington, where he is Distinguished Professor of English. He directs the Wells Scholars Program and has won several awards for his teaching. Irmscher writes regularly for the book section of The Wall Street Journal. He is represented by the Stuart Literary Agency.

Jean-Louis Poitevin is a writer and art critic. A doctor of philosophy, he is the author of numerous books and articles on contemporary art in particular and on literature, but also of fiction. Today, in addition to writing texts for catalogs and books, he gives lectures in France and abroad, particularly in Korea. He also organizes photography and video exhibitions, and regularly publishes analyses and columns as well as essays on the subject of images in particular.