Dan Bergeron seems to have done the impossible: he’s found a way to make pedestrians on busy sidewalks look at homeless people. His life-sized, full-body shots of men and women appealing to passersby with handmade signs have been pasted to walls on the streets of Toronto. The people look real, though they are merely black and white reproductions of real people. The signs are the message, and read “I’d rather die than be homeless another winter” and “The system is broken. I am not.”
The artist explains the project to Wooster Collective:
The project is called “the Unaddressed” and it focuses on the under-housed, giving voice to their personal opinions. Over the course of 3 months I met with 18 individuals who are currently or have recently been homeless. Through meeting, talking about their lives and discussing issues that were important to them, they developed their announcements and created a cardboard sign to reveal them. By photographing homeless and formerly homeless individuals holding cardboard signs that announce their concerns, the hope is challenge preconceived notions of homelessness and make the passers-by realize how serious the situation is and that everybody deserves the same basic necessities of life and to be treated the same way. Basically do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Source: Wooster Collective
