Clifton Hall Link

Outside the Dream: Child Poverty in America was an exhibition of documentary photographs by Stephen Shames, presented on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Community Action Organization of Erie County, Inc. – Head Start, with the cooperation of CAO-Head Start and The Girl Friends, Inc., Buffalo Chapter.

Outside the Dream rivets attention to one of our most urgent social problems, the more than 12 million children of poverty adrift in an affluent society. From 1984 to 1989, photographer Stephen Shames devoted himself to a major photographic study that chronicles the lives of the 20% of children in the United States who live below the poverty line. While documenting the plight of these children, Shames intimately experienced daily existence in welfare hotels and abandoned buildings. His extraordinary eye bears witness to the heartbreaking and the heroic. Of the children in his work, Shames wrote, “These are good kids. They are likeable. They have dreams and hopes. Perhaps this… will help us allow these children to become part of the American dream.”

This exhibition was organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.