A View from the Isle

Fitting that after last night’s Net Tuesday on social media for change, that today is blog action day and that the topic is poverty.

I had already decided to do my post as a photo essay. This is my first photo essay, and I’m mostly happy with it.

Anyway, what I was thinking is that we often only think of poverty as being something in “some sections” of town, but really it’s everywhere. Since I moved to Vancouver in late July I’ve been more keenly aware of poverty. Not just in the Downtown Eastside, but in the “nice” neighborhoods, the malls, places where it seemed incongruous to me.

Having been personally touched by poverty, I wanted to try to express that not only is poverty everywhere, but that we have grown so accepting and accustomed to it that we ignore it.

For the action part of this exercise I would encourage you to donate to the organizations that are doing work on the ground helping people. I’m going to be donating to the Union Gospel Mission.

As it would happen, as I was coming towards the end of my walk I ran into a couple guys selling calendars with pictures from the Downtown Eastside.  The Hope In Shadows project looks amazing and the 2009 calendar inspired to my pics in black and white as well.

The rest of my Flickr set from my walk is in this slideshow:

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Tags: bad08, blog action day 2008, photo essay, Photography, poverty, Vancouver