Inspired by social documentary photographers like W. Eugene Smith, Lewis Hine and Sebastião Salgado, Gerry Yaum believes that photographs can be a force for positive social change. Gerry Yaum: Documentary Photographs 2013-2022: Families of the Dump/The People Who Live Under the Freeway opens at the UNB Art Centre on Oct. 28, 2022, at 5 p.m.
Gerry Yaum is a self-taught photographer with over 40 years of experience honing his craft. Based in Edmonton Alberta, he has been taking pictures of the people in the Mae Sot Garbage Dump since 2013 and the Klong Toey Slum in Bangkok since 2012. For him, these photographs are more than artworks, they help to educate, raise awareness, and interpret forgotten lives.
The Families of the Dump features images of families from the Karen and Mon ethnic groups who are refugees from nearby Myanmar, where they faced extreme poverty, rape, genocide, and decades of civil war. Here, in the Mae Sot dump, they can earn a living scavenging for recyclable goods to support their families.
The People Who Live Under the Freeway exist on the edge of society, often forgotten by their peers and abandoned by their families and loved ones. They fight a daily battle just to survive in an over-populated city of more than 10 million people.
Gerry Yaum: Documentary Photographs 2013-2022: Families of the Dump/The People Who Live Under the Freeway will be on view Oct. 28 - Dec. 15, 2022, in the UNB Art Centre galleries as well as our online galleries.
The Families of the Dump and The People Who Live Under the Freeway are ongoing social documentary projects that tell the stories of the people that I meet. The more I looked, the more I found, and the more stories that needed to be told.
My photography is inspired by the great social documentary photographers, W. Eugene Smith, Lewis Hine, and Sebastiao Salgado. The reason I make photographs is a simple one. I believe that it can be a force for positive change in the world and it can help people in need.
The themes behind my images are straight forward: I make photographs that focus on society’s forgotten and ignored people. I try to tell my subject’s stories with compassion, empathy, and honesty. I use these images to raise money to help the people I photograph. It is the perfect circle of creative life: I make the photos; viewers see them in galleries and online and donate to help the people in need. No middlemen, no waste, no BS!
I began photographing families in the Mae Sot garbage dump in Thailand in 2013. These photos feature over 50 families mostly from the Karen and Mon ethnic groups who are refugees from nearby Myanmar. In the garbage dump they can earn money scavenging for recyclable goods to support their families. Most importantly, here they can escape from extreme poverty, rape, genocide, and decades of civil war.
I had travelled to Southeast Asia for years but in 2013, when I made my first trip to Mae Sot, I entered a world that was entirely foreign to me. It was overwhelming in every way. I remember following a young child as he walked into the dump to work. It was shocking! The searing heat, the smell, the flies, and the blinding light reflecting off thousands of white plastic bags were almost too much for me! Other foreign tourists were lying on white sand beaches and here I was in this terrible place covered in flies. They were buzzing in my eyes, nose, and ears and crawling on my arms and legs, hands, and shoes. I asked myself "Gerry what the f-ck are you doing here?"
I gave up trying to catch up with the child who was much faster and more nimble walking through the waste, and I saw a figure working in the distance. As I approached the figure, I realized that it was a small, delicate 9-year-old girl. This little child seemed oblivious to the heat and the flies. She just looked at me and smiled and spoke quietly to her father nearby. I thought to myself, "what grace this little girl has", she was like an angel glowing in the sunlight with her back-lit straw hat. Since 2013 I have visited Mae Sot many times, spending hundreds of hours and taking thousands of photographs.
On my first trip I took 2 bags of food, since then I have handed out over $8000 (CAD) in new goods, headlamps, rubber boots, medicine, food, toys, candy, raincoats, clothing, and school supplies from donations raised through my photographs.
The photographs are more than art. They help to educate, raise awareness, and interpret forgotten lives. The good people of Mae Sot have taught me so much.
This project dates to 2012, when I started to explore and meet the people who live in slum rooms and shacks under or near the freeway in Bangkok’s notorious Klong Toey Slum. They exist on the edge of society, often forgotten by their peers and abandoned by their families and loved ones. They fight a daily battle to survive in an over-populated city of over 10 million people.
One day I accidentally came across a man named Anapon who lived in a small dirty room of scrap wood boards. He is a quiet man who smiled shyly at me and was very polite. Later I found out that he had been a Muay Thai boxer who had travelled internationally. He lost his ability to box after an injury, then lost his family and home. Because of his badly deformed foot he rarely ventures far from his room as it is too painful to walk.
I met another man named Goh who would wheel himself around on a handmade skateboard-like cart. There was also a woman named Ooh who had mental health issues. She had been married to a Western man who lived in Thailand but when they separated, and she ended up living alone with her dog on the street. She is not sure of her age, but she tells me she is over 40.
Over the next several years I became more and more connected to the lives of my new friends, and I would return to photograph them. In 2014, I found out that Goh had passed away. I was told by Anapon that one day he just did not wake up and the police came and took his body away. He had just disappeared. I think of that sometimes. Khun Go now only exists in the pictures that I took of him. For me that is part of the beauty of photography, remembering lives.
Gerry Yaum* is a pseudonym that the photographer uses for his documentary work. He wishes to remain anonymous to prevent being blacklisted by the governments of Southeast Asia since some of the photographs place the countries, governments, police, and politicians in a poor light. Secondly, and most importantly, he wants people to engage with the subjects of the photos, not the photographer. Gerry Yaum is a self-taught photographer who has been a student of the craft for 41 years.
Blog: www.gerryyaum.blogspot.com
YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/user/gerryyaum/videos
GoFundMe Page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/families-of-the-dump-people-under-the-freeway?qid=c91fb1225d4a4ae2a28082b7963340b0
*Yaum is the Thai word for "Security Guard". He has worked as a night-time security guard in Edmonton, Alberta for 24 years.
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