Monday, March 10, 1997
By Alicia Cheak
Daily Bruin Contributor
What becomes of kids who run away? What is life really like on
the streets? Do these questions even matter, since out of sight,
these kids can perhaps stay out of mind?
Instead of brushing runaways and their ordeals under the carpet,
photographer Jim Goldberg has placed them in full view for the
public. "Raised by Wolves" is the culmination of a 10-year
interaction with and documentation of runaways living in San
Francisco and Hollywood. It is on display at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art through May 18.
Goldberg’s story follows closely the myth of Romulus and Remus,
in which two brothers abandoned by their parents are raised by
wolves  except this time, the two brothers are two lovers,
Echo and "Tweeky" Dave, and the wolves are the dangers of life on
the streets.
Goldberg sets up the story with a yearbook photo of a young,
innocent Echo, who tells in her own words of sexual abuse by her
father. She ran away at 13 and was picked up for prostitution at
16, about the same time she started using drugs. That is her past.
Goldberg picked up the story in 1986 when he began to document her
life with his camera. He followed her through the streets, through
squalid living conditions, through her interactions and through the
birth of her child. Black-and-white photographs capture private and
public moments of this girl as she becomes a woman.
Goldberg’s involvement with Echo leads him to Dave. Dave does
drugs, panhandles and spends nights in jails. Like Echo, he also
has severe wounds: There is a particularly graphic picture of a
huge scar which extends from the top of his chest down to his
stomach; his father gave it to him. He is almost always a bag of
bones in the photographs. Chest bones protruding, rotting teeth,
sunken eyes and perhaps a grin here or there illustrate his life on
the streets.
Dave’s and Echo’s lives are intertwined  they are lovers,
he the father of her child. They meet, get together, separate and
meet again. In between their interactions Goldberg photographs
other individuals, some friends of the two, others strangers.
The photographs are provoking, some to the point of being
nauseating  guns, drugs, blood and death. The scars are
physical and emotional. Their bodies tell the effects of their
living condition; their faces reflect the effects on their spirits.
Emotions range from anger to resignation. An boy who has overdosed
stares aimlessly at the camera; he doesn’t even know what’s
happening.
Goldberg’s purpose is to capture these people as they go about
their lives. He says there is no "editing." Yet, the photographs
cannot stand alone. Many of them merely reinforce archetypal images
of what life on the streets is  drugs, sex, anger and
frustration.
The trip around the exhibit is like a drive down Hollywood
Boulevard or other similar haunts. Letters, artifacts and video
clips are a powerful reminder that these people are actually
breathing and thinking. In these the individuals’ voices,
intelligence, reason, conflicts and dilemmas of their existence
surface. The problem is that when there are too many faces in the
same environment doing practically the same thing, there is a
tendency to lump them as a group.
The personal belongings, however, separate one person from
another and heighten their reality. One could almost imagine the
horrible stench of the dirty pillow resting in the case or the
ghastly things committed on the mattress which appears in several
of the photographs. Sensory experience is absent in the
photographs, which, though graphic, are basically flat images of
people.
What’s also amazing is how poetic the runaways are, perhaps
because of the conflicts within them. Thoughts are written randomly
on napkins, scratch paper, on anything. Most are discarded after
the temporary emotional release. Who’s going to read them anyway?
Yet Goldberg collects them, reads them, and displays them.
A realistic depiction of runaways could not have more validity
coming from the mouths or minds of those individuals living it.
Goldberg tells the story of Echo and Dave in their voices, which is
one of the most powerful parts of the exhibit. Because of the
multitude of faces, there is a tendency to search for these two and
their stories amid the other faces, as they are individualized and
taken out of the "runaway" category. It is in focusing on the two
that the experience becomes an empathetic one.
A collage titled "101 Faces" testifies to the tendency to view
the runaways as a collective entity. There are just too many of
them and from afar, they all look alike. Closer inspection would
differentiate one from the other, but this process is extremely
time-consuming. Therefore, attention is practically allocated to
two individuals, and perhaps one or two memorable others.
Perhaps that, so often, runaways are interchangeable says
something about human dealings with these people. The photographs
raise many questions without providing solutions. Goldberg’s work
merely describes one man’s experience, although he believes the
years he spent on this journey makes the work representative of
many runaways.
Echo writes in a personal letter, "So many people have tried to
become part of these kids’ lives, and then turn them into whatever
they think they should be. I have never known you to do that. You
showed us as we are and let us tell the story ourselves." As a
middleman, Goldberg tries to capture things as they are, without
moralizing or judging.
Goldman talks to a mother and director of children’s agencies
who has spent thousands of dollars to rescue her son. She tells
Goldberg, "After a certain point, there is nothing you can do. He
is like a tortured animal in a cell." This mother hopes for her
son’s death. Then there is another mother who gets together with
her son to do drugs.
Who would have thought that the freeways house runaways? Who
would have thought that there was a community under all that
concrete?
These are complex issues which cannot be simply resolved.
Goldberg, in an interview with curator Robert Sobieszek,
acknowledges that "the roles are very confused."
"Ask any parent who is trying to be open, patient and lenient,"
Sobieszek says. "It’s very difficult to know which lines to cross,
which not to cross and where to set the boundaries."
Yet he is optimistic that one of the kids he photographed went
home.
Still, in the end, there’s an unsettling feeling.
Echo is off the streets and back with her mother. There is hope
in that. But she also has a child and is living in the basement.
Sometimes, the lesser of two evils is the only choice.
Dave is dead. The jacket he wears in many of the photographs now
dangles from the ceiling. Life goes out, yet all the baggage
remains. A jacket, photographs and a video of his last meal with
Goldberg are all put on display in a large museum.
ART: "Raised by Wolves: Photographs and Documents of Runaways by
Jim Goldberg" is on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of
Art. Information: (213) 857-6000.
"Destiny’s Shiny Bracelet" (1989) is one of Jim Goldberg’s many
photos that document the trials of runaways.