A century after photographer Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, a harrowing portrait of urban poverty, Jim Goldberg took to the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco where he met a cadre of homeless children fending for themselves. From 1985–1995, Goldberg bore witness to chaotic reality of street life to create Raised by Wolves, a collection of photographs, snippets of conversation, handwritten notes, drawings, snapshots, and the detritus of daily life, which the Washington Post called, “A heartbreaking novel with pictures.”
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The protagonists, Tweaky Dave and Echo, were charismatic but troubled youth, whose personalities, histories, and dreams leap from the page and grab you by the throat. With Raised by Wolves, Goldberg found a way inside a band of outsiders whose existence has been alternately vilified, marginalized, or erased, and restored to them a humanity that had been stripped by addiction, violence, and abuse.
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The book transformed the role that photography could play as it collapsed the space between documentary and narrative fiction, revealing the endless interplay between myth, history, and identity. The people were real, their circumstances harrowing, but their stories contained half-truths and falsehoods constructed to reflect what they want or need to believe. Tweeky Dave described his devout Christian parents as a junkie slut and a biker from Hell; while untrue the slanderous depictions seemed befitting for a couple who later turned their back on their dying son.
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