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Manchester Craftmen's Guild exhibit features homeless people
Saturday, January 05, 2002
By Eve Modzelewski
Seeing is believing.
That was the notion that motivated Tipper Gore to turn back to her roots as a photojournalist. In an effort to show a more human side of homelessness, she took photographs for "The Way Home: Ending Homelessness in America," a photography exhibition at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, where Gore spoke yesterday.
Photographs, Gore said, can serve as an avenue for change -- in this case, by helping people understand that homeless people are more than a faceless mass.
She believes homeless people are individual survivors whose stories should be told.
"There's nothing more important than putting a face on a statistic," she said during a news conference at the exhibition.
Gore, who is the wife of former Vice President Al Gore, started work as an advocate for the homeless in the mid-1980s, after her children -- who were in grade school at the time -- asked her about a homeless woman they saw on the street.
They wondered how they could help the woman and asked why she had no home. Eventually, Gore decided to take action.
"In their childhood innocence, they were absolutely right," she said. "There's a moral imperative for all of us to end homelessness."
"The Way Home" includes 10 of Gore's photographs, as well as the works of 12 other American photographers, including Annie Leibovitz, Mary Ellen Mark and Eli Reed, who also attended yesterday's conference.
Gore's photos include two taken in Tennessee in 1974 -- one of them a black-and-white portrait of a woman who had been evicted from her apartment. The woman is shown outside, huddling among her possessions under a plastic sheet in the rain.
"The Way Home" closes today. It was a project of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the publishing company Harry N. Abrams Inc.
Bill Strickland, president and CEO of the Guild, said the exhibition was a perfect fit for the venue because both are dedicated to people who have been pushed aside in life.
The exhibition was a follow-up to an exhibition Gore worked on more than 10 years ago, called "Homeless in America," which was designed to reduce stereotypes of homeless people.
Eve Modzelewski is a free-lance writer.
Tipper Gore, accompanied by Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, tours the Manchester Craftmen's Guild yesterday afternoon. (Franka Bruns, Post-Gazette) 
Tipper Gore, rear, listens as Bill Strickland, president and CEO of the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, speaks to the media yesterday. (Franka Bruns, Post-Gazette)