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Exhibit Offers Inside Look at Poverty and Homelessness
posted 3/20/07
ADRIAN, Mich. – Come get an
inside glimpse of the dynamics of local poverty with
“Conversation Pieces: A Portrait of Poverty and
Homelessness in Lenawee County,” by Lad Strayer
and Jennifer Burd, showing at Adrian College from April
2 – 15 in the Dawson Auditorium lobby.
The project is an outgrowth of a series
of articles on local homelessness that Burd and Strayer
contributed to, which ran in Adrian’s Daily Telegram
in May 2002. The series won a Michigan Associated Press
Editorial Association award that year.
Strayer and Burd will give a talk
about their experiences with the local homeless community
on Friday, April 13 from 12:15 – 1 p.m. in the
Dawson Auditorium lobby.
While completing the Daily Telegram
reports and continuing up through June 2005, Strayer
and Burd, a photographer and a writer, were regulars
at The Daily Bread of Lenawee Soup Kitchen. Once accepted
in this community, they recorded a variety of interactions,
conversations, stories, and other moments particularly
telling of the condition of poverty yet largely invisible
to the mainstream community.
Burd’s poem-like text describing
these everyday moments, together with Strayer’s
photographs of individuals at the soup kitchen, at their
makeshift homes, or on the streets, provide an inside
look into this community in a way not possible in reports
that paint with broader strokes.
By linking their audience to their
subjects through a shared humanity, Strayer and Burd
invite viewers beyond stereotypes to the underlying
causes of homelessness and suggest the difficult questions
society must ask in order to resolve it.
Dawson Auditorium is located off of
Charles Street on the Adrian
College campus. Hours in the lobby are 7 a.m. to
6 p.m., and Saturday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
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