Harvey Finkle
Photographer
Philadelphia, U.S.

Link: harveyfinkle.com

Bio:

Harvey Finkle is a documentary still photographer who has produced a substantial body of work concerned with social, political and cultural issues. His work has been extensively exhibited and published, including three books entitled, "Urban Nomads," "Still Home: Jews of South Philadelphia" and "Reading."

His recent work includes a documentation of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), a poor people's movement emanating from the poorest neighborhood in Pennsylvania; and "The Jews of South Philadelphia," interviews and photographs of the remnants of what once was among the largest Jewish communities in the nation.



His ongoing work includes documenting the activities of many progressive organizations including a death penalty abolitionist group, ACT-UP, ADAPT (disabled activists), KWRU, and other groups concerned with housing and homelessness. Also, his work includes an extensive inventory of images depicting all aspects of life in Deaf culture, plus a substantial collection of photos dealing with education.

Works in progress are about the new wave of immigrant and refugee families who have settled in urban areas and the evolving Transgender community.

When asked if anyone is really homeless in that they don’t have a house, Finkle replied: “Oh yeah. I was just speaking to someone from the Kensington Welfare Rights Union who has what is called a safe house, so someone can have a place where he or she is safe. They have a room where the floor is mattress-to-mattress. You can’t walk in the room. One of the women just had a baby that she’s going to bring home and they had no room to put a crib in the place. She may have a roof over her head. But that’s a homeless person. It’s a homeless community, in a sense.

“We don’t have as many street people as we had before, but in the last months it’s starting to pick up again. These are people who sleep on the street. A lot of the homeless families have shelter for the night. Then they have to register again for shelter the next day. It’s not the case that you get a slip of paper that says you can stay in a shelter for a month. Every day you’ve got to re-register for the shelter that you’re going to stay in. There are homeless people. Yeah. New York City had large, old tenements in which they held people who had been homeless. One girl, in six or seven years, never got health care. People didn’t get health care. They didn’t get anything. They didn’t get services they needed.

“Someone may have a temporary roof over their head, but in a sense, they’re homeless.”



Economic Human Rights: A depiction of a poor people's movement lead by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, and spearheaded by the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Cheri Honkala, Director

"1 in 5 in a U.S. soup kitchen is a child"
“Homeless Facts,” Goodwill Inn Homeless Shelter, as owned and operated by GW Homeless Services, Inc., http://www.goodwillinn.org/facts.htm (accessed February 1, 2006).