Gerry Yaum: Social Documentary and Wet Plate Photographer
"The reason I make photographs is a simple one. I believe that social documentary photography can be a force for positive change in the world. I feel that social documentary photographs can help people in need."
Gerry Yaum is a Canadian social documentary photographer. “The People Who Live Under the Freeway” is a project that focuses on the lives of a group of Thai people who live under an active freeway in Bangkok’s notorious Klong Toey Slum.
Inspired by the great social documentary photographers W. Eugene Smith, Lewis Hine, and Sebastiao Salgado,
Gerry Yaum is more interested in telling the stories of his subjects than promoting himself. From Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Yaum is a self-taught photographer who began his journey with a camera at 14. He worked in security for 30 years, giving him the freedom and time to make photographs.
For Yaum, nothing much else matters.
When asked about himself, he is quick to ask for the focus to be on the joy he finds in the process of photography, of creating, and in exploring the stories of his subjects: “I am inconsequential,” he muses: “the photographs and the people in them are all that matters to me.”
To explore more of Gerry Yaum’s photography, learn more about the people and lives he documents, visit the links below, or click the photo to the left or below.
www.gerryyaum.blogspot.com (photography blog)
http://ambrotoskanata.blogspot.com (wet plate collodion blog)
www.gerryyaum.net. (photography webpage)
Click image to visit site.
From Focal Collective Share Your Story
"The more I searched, the more people I found, the more stories that needed to be told. The People Who Lived Under the Freeway is an ongoing project. My friends who live under the freeway are the poorest of the poor of the slum. They are forgotten, kind, good-hearted, friendly people. Their stories need to be preserved, and I am hopeful the photographs will help them. "
Click image to visit site.