Kathy Suder Photography

BLACK LIVES MATTER

How is it possible that we are still talking about this same systemic inequality?

The facts are inescapable. The truth is impossible to ignore? Like so many of you, I have watched in horror at the inhumane treatment and murder of so many black men, women and children...

, not just in recent days but over my lifetime.

To all of you in the Black community, I am sorry.

I am sorry for the pain and anguish you have suffered for centuries.

I am sorry for my part in the racism you face and the advantages that I have at your disadvantage. I commit to learning more, listening more and doing better. I will continue to learn where I can make changes in my own behavior and in supporting change in general.

•I will use any platform I have to highlight inequality and injustice.

•I reconfirm my commitment to combat racism everywhere I see it. If I hear it, I will confront it. If I see it, I will confront it. If I see it in myself, I will dismantle it!

*I will educated myself about the origins and continuing expressions of racism so I can more effectively fight it. I will look at my blindspots and where I've made mistakes.

•As an artist, I stand for equality, diversity, human rights for everyone, humanity, fairness, truth, justice, Mother Earth and LOVE. Art is never neutral. It enlightens, amplifies the voices of the oppressed and promotes change. I commit to being that change.

•African Americans make up approximately 50% of the homeless population in our country despite only representing 13 percent of the general population. I will continue to work to bring a heightened awareness to the needs of the homeless.

•I will donate 10% of all profits from my work to organizations that support the homeless which has affected the black community disproportionately and continues to ravage the lives of more than 600,000 in our country today.

I look to a future where we all live together as

one HUMAN race.

With love and light,

Kathy

More on homelessness and the Black Community:

ABC News

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HINDSIGHT IS 2020

For ideas on how you can help, and find help, during this Global Pandemic, click on the button to the right....

EVERYBODY IS LIGHT--Be the Light In This Pandemic

ARTIST THROWS LIGHT ON GRIM HOLIDAY FOR HOMELESS

Los Angeles, CA, January 7, 2020

Knockout Photography is pleased to announce artist Kathy Sherman Suder’s latest photographic works, EVERYBODY IS SOMEBODY, addressing the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles.

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 share d 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)

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.

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.

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 the New York Times and Los Angeles Times Magazine. 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.

For additional images, publication rights, and story content please make inquires to the studio at suderstudio@gmail.com.