The Way home. Ending homelessness in America.

We cite from the cover : /
"This extraordinary book documents the plight of homeless men, women, and children in cities and towns across America—and points the way to lasting solutions. Photographers as varied in outlook and style as Mary Ellen Mark and Annie Leibovitz, Eli Reed and Clarence Williams travel through America's cities to record homelessness not as a general social condition or charged political issue, but as a predicament with which real men and women grapple. From Miami to Seattle, Houston to Minneapolis, New York to Los Angeles, these artists document homelessness and its solutions with keen, compassionate, and incisive eyes.
We have grown familiar with the sight of ragged and hungry people on our streets. We have come to believe that homelessness is with us forever—that it may perhaps be reduced, but can never be eliminated. We have even begun to think that in the United States people have always been homeless in the numbers that we see today. Yet this is not so. The safety net that once protected the vulnerable and aided the ill has suffered from many pressures, but has not disappeared. Programs exist, and people of energy and commitment are working to construct new ways of confronting and overcoming this persistent crisis.
One of the most painful aspects of homelessness is its dehumanizing effect. Without a home, one loses a sense of identity. Americans of goodwill struggle with a sense of compassion fatigue as we seek ways to help. Yet to end homelessness in America, we must begin to see "the homeless" as individual human beings, rather than a faceless, nameless crowd.
With this necessity to see in mind, Philip Brook-man, Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and Jane Slate Siena of the Getty Conservation Institute have invited 13 eminent photographers—some artists, some photojournalists—to meet homeless citizens in their makeshift dwelling places, and in various forms of interim and permanent housing. Contributing authors Tipper Gore and Nan Roman, President of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, are both longtime advocates for the homeless. Roman's essay provides context for these images, describing the present state of the crisis and offering concrete, practical solutions, while Gore's foreword offers a personal perspective. The photographers' captions describe their impressions of the situations they recorded and poems, some by members of the Writers' Forum at the Miriam's Kitchen Breakfast Program in Washington, D.C., infuse the book with the voices of homeless men and women."