Thursday, November 12, 2009

Black Scale x The Tenderloin Project | The Art of Living...


"The Tenderloin Project is an ongoing artistic endeavor focused on one of San Francisco’s most marginalized neighborhoods, The Tenderloin. Utilizing the interactive mediums of photography and film, we aim to capture a compelling and honest portrait of this diverse community.

With living exhibitions that will travel through San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York the project will be showcased in a variety of outlets, creating access for a range of viewers to see these intimate, yet objective images, and to understand what life is like in the Tenderloin.

The project will culminate in publishing the images in book form, with proceeds from the sales being donated to organizations that promote and give access to art in the Tenderloin. This, we feel, will allow our project to live on for years and generations to come in the form of art within the community."


"The incentive for this project is to engage with The Tenderloin and to interact with members who live in the community; be it on the street, in an apartment or an SRO. The means by which we are engaging with the neighborhood is through the mediums of photography and film.

We aren’t trying to stereotype the Tenderloin as being a bad or dangerous community, nor are we trying to directly change the community, ie. to take drugs off the streets, or to put an end to homelessness, both of which are undeniable problems that live within the community. Instead we are trying to take small steps through our project to help shine a positive light on the community and to try and give some of the members a voice, a face, and to share their stories with the world. Ultimately we are trying to showcase the community both creatively and positively, while also remaining honest and objective to what life is actually like on the streets there.

We will be releasing a series of short-documentaries on the website over the course of the next couple months to further share the stories of the subjects that have been photographed as part of the project.

This is a young project and it’s continually re-defining itself as it evolves. We are now working to put up a paypal account on the site so that people who want to get involved can help contribute to the project.

We appreciate all of the feedback and are inspired to see so many people reacting to the imagery." - Sean Desmond & John Elliott (The Tenderloin Project)

I have witnessed first hand the homeless epidemic in San Francisco and it does seem to have become an irreversible fixture to the Bay landscape. I think the project is insightful and a lot of good can be done through the work but their is a fine line of exploitation that is being explored. There are numerous stances and opinion on utilizing homeless people as the subject for bodies of film and photo based work. I am not going to go into the details but judging by some of the past Black Scale releases I question their motives. I just hope these real street artists got paid for their work. I would also hope that ALL proceeds from this project go back into the community to make some change.

(via.
BlackScale / TheTenderloinProject)