This project was initiated in 2018 by Poverello House, a prominent homeless shelter with a large footprint in downtown Fresno. Their programs also serve homeless clients in many of the county’s rural areas. Poverello wanted to tell the story of the local homeless population in the wake of a no camping ordinance that had recently been passed by the Fresno City Council.
Working with their marketing partner, Jeffrey Scott Advertising, Poverello House reached out to CDA and asked us to provide photographs for their media campaign. Guided by Poverello’s very experienced staff, we visited encampments in both urban and rural communities and made portraits of their homeless clients who chose to participate in the project. The resulting work was exhibited in the historic downtown office building owned by Jeffrey Scott Advertising, who created an extensive public outreach campaign around the show.
In 2023, Poverello asked us to make new images for a second outreach campaign in partnership with Blare Media. Again, Poverello’s staff led us to a variety of urban and rural locations to photograph their clients. This time, the prints were actually exhibited on easels in the streets of downtown Fresno in coordination with other publicity events.
All of the people in the photographs agreed to participate and signed model releases.
Visit our Homelessness Public Art page to see an earlier collaboration with Poverello House and the Fresno Art Museum in 2011.
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