'Making the invisible, visible': Haunting pictures of America's most vulnerable people shot by photojournalists against poverty




These are the haunting pictures shot by photojournalists attempting to alleviate poverty in the U.S. by exposing the epic struggle for survival of 50 million impoverished Americans.

Steve Liss is the founder of AmericanPoverty.org, a non-profit alliance of photojournalists who use visual storytelling to raise awareness about ‘how the other half lives’.

The award-winning photographer, who has shot 43 Time magazine covers and covered six presidential campaigns, founded the ‘In Our Backyard’ project three years ago, which encourages people to document the poverty that is evident on their doorsteps.

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How the other half lives: One of Steve Liss's pictures which chronicles the abject condition that one family lives in. Electrical cables remain unconcealed in the sparse room

‘I can recite statistics to you all you want, but when I do that people's eyes glaze over,’ Liss told CBS. ‘But if I tell the story of one family, and one family's struggle in a compelling way, then they're engaged.’

Liss, who also teaches photography at Columbia College in Chicago, says the group's objective is not only to make poverty ‘visible’ and a ‘national priority’, but to also dispel stereotypes about poor people.

Liss's photographers have travelled around the country – shooting everywhere from California to New York, and Minnesota to Texas – to expose poverty in the US.

Photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally has focussed on America’s Gulf Coast for her expose on children living below the poverty line. The series entitled ‘Children of the Gulf’ depicts the suffering that was laid bare in Mississippi and Louisiana by Hurricane Katrina.

Poor: Impoverished children sit around a beat-up trailer in shots taken by award-winning photojournalist Brenda Ann Kenneally for a series entitled Children of the Gulf

Fending for themselves: Children of the Gulf feed each other in another one of Kenneally's haunting shots, which depicts the suffering of America's poorest

High stakes: Born into poverty, surrounded by drugs and gangs, poorly served by the city and local schools, many of the children at Chicago's Paul Revere Elementary School, in the Greater Grand Crossing Neighborhood, face an uncertain future

Snapshot: Deziray Morris holds baby Raijohna in her apartment while her daughter Kendra looks for something to eat. The family has had huge financial difficulties after the death of their father John Lawrence. Hopeful: A little girl points out of the window of her dilapidated home in one of the states of America's Gulf Coast Deprived: Images of abject suffering and deprivation on the Gulf Coast were laid bare by Hurricane Katrina, but, in Mississippi alone nearly one third of all children were poor even before the disaster struck. Most still are. But the award-winning photojournalist, who resides in Brooklyn, New York, points out that in Mississippi alone nearly one third of all children were poor even before Hurricane Katrina - and that most still are. Stephen Shames has also concentrated on America’s poor children in his series entitled ‘children of Poverty’. He explains that in the richest country the world has ever known, more than 13 million American children – most of them from working families – live in poverty.

Discrepancy: In the richest country the world has ever known more than 13 million American children - most of them from working families - live in poverty. Photojournalist Stephen Shames has championed the cause of America's most vulnerable children in a series of photographs called Children of Poverty

Profile: Liss says that during the Great Depression, photographers created riveting images chronicling the desperation of those times, adding that seventy years later, the plight and potential of the least fortunate members of our communities is mostly unseen and ignored, and photographers are once again poised to jump-start a national conversation about the issue of poverty

Crowded: This shot taken in Mississippi, where 12 per cent of children live in extreme poverty, and where an African-American baby can expect to have a shorter lifespan than that of the average American in 1960, depicts the difficult conditions some people have to sleep in

Sad: A man stares out of a broken window. Liss says, 'I can recite statistics to you all you want, but when I do that people's eyes glaze over'