Bombay Beach Biennale INstallation 2019
In March 2019, Kathy Sherman Suder created two installation art pieces as part of the Bombay Beach Biennale - a progressive art festival established in 2016 along the Salton Sea in California.
EVERYBODY IS SOMEBODY: GHOST CAMP
Based on a photographic series by Kathy Sherman Suder, this installation of 100
illuminated tents stood as an homage to the homeless and refugees all over the world who are
often unseen.
illuminated tents stood as an homage to the homeless and refugees all over the world who are
often unseen.
Featured in The New York Times Style Section // April 14, 2019
Every tent used in the Everybody is Somebody installation was donated to the Downtown Women's Center of LA and distributed to women in need.
Below: Everybody is Somebody tents being used on Skid Row in Los Angeles.
EVERYBODY IS SOMEBODY: A PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION
EVERYBODY IS SOMEBODY, based on a photographic series by Kathy Sherman
Suder in collaboration with her son & journalist, Jason Suder, focuses on the homeless-
-the abandoned, lost and forgotten, the working poor, war veterans, abused women and
children, the addicted, victims and the victimizers. Through her photographs, Suder
seeks to capture, with dignity, the lives of those who have been abandoned or left
behind, inviting us to take another very humanizing look along with her. A limited
edition Zine, only available during the 2019 Bombay Beach Biennale, accompanies the
exhibition.
Suder in collaboration with her son & journalist, Jason Suder, focuses on the homeless-
-the abandoned, lost and forgotten, the working poor, war veterans, abused women and
children, the addicted, victims and the victimizers. Through her photographs, Suder
seeks to capture, with dignity, the lives of those who have been abandoned or left
behind, inviting us to take another very humanizing look along with her. A limited
edition Zine, only available during the 2019 Bombay Beach Biennale, accompanies the
exhibition.
The Wizard © Kathy Suder
Suder uses photography, text, and sculpture to humanize the tens of thousands living on the streets in Los Angeles, a network of abandoned, addicted, disabled, lost, forgotten, working poor, veterans, victims and victimizers. Through her lens and the stories shared by the vulnerable community continuing to struggle in America, Suder displays with empathy and intimacy an epidemic within her community.
"Kathy Suder is not a mere observer of this show. She does not hide her camera behind a buttonhole of her coat as Walker Evans did in the 1930s. Nor does she shirk back into the shadows to safely record the scene from a distance... Suder relishes in their humanity. "
- John Rohrbach, Senior Curator of Photography, Amon Carter Museum
(from his introduction to her photographic book, UNDERGROUND)
(from his introduction to her photographic book, UNDERGROUND)
Amanda, 2017 © Kathy Suder
The state of California is in the midst of a catastrophic housing shortage, fighting for solutions to assist their share of more than 500,000 Americans living in homesslessness today, a quarter of whom are children. The latest White House metric records the streets of Los Angeles holding more than 58,936 homeless residents, an astounding 16 percent growth over the previous year. Suder notes:”
"It’s not a time for pointing fingers; it’s a time for coming together, for calling upon the brightest minds to find immediate and lasting solutions to this devastating housing and mental health crises that is unfathomable in the modern Western world.”
EVERYBODY IS SOMEBODY aims to bring recognition and dialogue around L.A.’s present day injustice. In the wake of the Dec. 17 New York Times’ article, Among the World’s Most Dire Places, a feature on an Oakland homeless camp, this issue has never been more topical or urgent for this state or the nation as a whole.
Daniel, 2016 © Kathy Suder
After spending the day with Daniel he wonders out loud as he offers to share an untouched pizza he finds in the trash can
“I wonder why people throw everything away? Maybe to help me.”
For our community members who are not offered a sense of security, Suder seeks to remind her viewers what the role of the home is when so many are not afforded this basic sense of security. New legislation is turning 15 percent of the country into outlaws for a life they cannot seem to pull themselves from. While these people sleep on the streets of every city across the country, Suder’s humanizing tour de force of the victims of this epidemic helps viewers see those affected not just as statistics but community members living in poverty and need.
“Where a cacophony of words seem to fail us in portraying the desperate needs of our neighbors, all of us are living together on one planet, the beauty of truth is that we know it when we see it.”
"After looking into the eyes of the homelessness for the past six years, I am haunted by the recognition that these are the same vacant looks as those from the extraordinary images of the WPA photographers of the 1930s taken during the Great Depression by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Robert Frank, who captured an America on the verge of collapse," says Suder.
Tyler, 2016 © Kathy Suder
Kathy Sherman Suder’s first major series of work on boxers, KNOCKOUT, as described by The New Yorker, “owe more to Caravaggio than to Sports Illustrated” debuted in New York and marked Suder’s arrival on the U.S. art scene as an image maker of unusual emotional and visual power. The artist’s first U.S. solo museum exhibition, UNDERGROUND: Photographs by Kathy Sherman Suder was curated by John Rohrbach and opened at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in 2014 with accompanying catalog, which won awards and accolades. Her most recent installation of 100 illuminated tents and photographic works showing the face of homelessness at the Bombay Beach Biennale was reviewed in Playboy Magazine, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times Magazine and KCRW. Photographs by Suder have been acquired for the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Photographs reproduced with permission of photographer, Kathy Suder
Knockout Photography, Venice, CA