Homelessness takes many forms. The contemporary view of someone pushing a shopping representative of all forms of homelessness.
In rural settings, homelessness often means living in a shanty or a car. Images of cardboard shacks built by agricultural workers reflect the fact that work alone does not guarantee adequate housing.
In urban areas homeless people are grouped together around service providers and kept out of prosperous neighborhoods. They remain on the move because of laws against camping, sitting, lying, panhandling, sleeping, blocking the sidewalk, and possessing “stolen property” (shopping carts and milk crates) – to name just a few. As homeless people disappear from “view” into rural vastness or urban pockets of poverty, artists have worked to make homelessness visible. Documentation of living conditions creates a powerful voice of moral outrage.
