JUVENILE DETENTION

Laredo, TX

In a squat block building in Laredo, Texas—and in similar places around the nation—children await trial or placement in concrete cells while the underlying issues that led to their behavior fester. Some are addicts who need treatment; others are kids battling mental illnesses. Many are angry and have been virtually abandoned by absentee or irresponsible parents. Some spend a few days, others months, but few actually receive treatment for the issues that brought them to Juvenile. And even one night of loneliness can be enough to prove their suspicion that nobody cares. As one detention worker told me, "You see some beautiful lives get wasted."

RUNAWAYS

Hollywood, CA

Runaways, young refugees from a million private wars being  waged across America–a ragtag army of the abused or simply ignored drifting aimlessly across the country like flotsam from a great national disaster. Some are missing, their earnest young portraits splashed across fliers distributed by desperate parents. Many aren't missed at all. Most youths simply exchange one hell for another. For kids on the street, there are four basic means of survival: charity, meaning the small number of soup kitchens and shelters that cater to the young; panhandling; prostitution and drug-dealing. Temporary shelter is hard to find and the alternatives are grim: abandoned buildings, alleyways, park benches. In the predatory world of American cities, runaways are near the

bottom of the food chain, and some are ruthlessly abused. The younger children face the longest odds.

IN THE MIDST OF PLENTY

In the richest democracy the world has ever know, millions of kids still go to bed hungry

More than a half-century ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty. Yet poverty persists, deeply, seemingly intractably, and often hidden from mainstream America. At the very core of poverty are issues of unemployment,  racial prejudice, discriminatory labor practices, environmental mismanagement, absence of affordable housing and a lack of access to healthcare and quality education. Millions of American children, mostly from working families, face problems so basic they seem totally out-of-place in the twenty-first century. Protecting children from poverty is the mark of a civilized society. By this standard, from border to border and coast to coast,  the U.S. has the dishonor of being one of the least civilized of the major industrialized countries.

AMERICAN SCENE

Travels across the U.S.

A good deal of my career has been spent traveling the United States and much of that time has been spent exploring the central themes of unity and disunity-"Are we coming together or falling apart?"-  by examining the contrasts found along the way: a Norman Rockwellian view of American life, tranquil images of work and family set in the rural landscapes and suburbs of the heartland with the gritty realities and enduring poverty of East Saint Louis and Apalachia – examining the truths to be found in each view without being totally seduced by either. I've photographed afluence and poverty; beauty and ugliness; cities and farms; new and old; young and old; success and failure.  If I've been unable to reconcile these views of America but merely to document them, that will have to be enough, because I've often felt so powerfully pulled in each of these directions.