The outstanding documentary photography of Claire Martin
Claire Martin is as quirky as it gets: with a degree in social work and communications she faked a resume to land a job as a chef on luxury cruisers and ended up becoming a documentary photographer who had the guts to live in a community of squatters and shoot the street life of Vancouver’s Downtown East Side – a suburb famous for extreme poverty, drug addiction and an AIDS rate of 30%.
Claire’s work is impressive – and very, very human: the story of each of her portrait subjects is there to read in her photographs. My favourite: the old lady of Downtown East Side, with her ragged clothes and the pearls in her hair, her coquetry so sweet and so sad.
In short, an exceptional photographer who doesn’t leave any rock unturned. You can see more of her work at clairemartinphotography.com.
These photos remind me of an anti-poverty project I did in High School that was all photo and music based. It was in the early days of video editing. Very emotional collection yet somber collection here.
Every image tells a story; amazing work. Opens the door of reality and forces the average working person to look closer at the growing problem of poverty in 2010
Mark Huxley
Agreed – too often we choose to look the other way.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by paul steele, Dave Bailey, limeshot, Dairi Godmother, SmartyHost and others. SmartyHost said: RT @limeshot The outstanding documentary photography of Claire Martin http://lime.mx/c3tzlJ <- outstanding, perhaps, confronting photos [...]