Photography series benefits homeless, transgender teens in New York

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New York City’s fastest growing homeless population is one hardly recognized, said social activist artist and photographer Josh Lehrer.

Lehrer has been working for the past two-and-a-half years on a series of portraits of homeless, transgender teenagers, and said he has become obsessed with his work. Of the 30,000 homeless teens in New York, he said 35 percent of them are transgender.

After CM Life recently published a story about gender-neutral housing at Central Michigan University, a member of CMU’s Spectrum put the newspaper in contact with Lehrer’s intern Andrew Dean. Lehrer’s collection is on display at Robert Miller Gallery in New York City.

“I’m using art as a medium for social change,” Lehrer said. “This is not exactly the type of art people hang up in their homes, but it’s challenging art.”

After researching this group, which was hit hardest by the economy, Lehrer got in touch with Lucky Michaels, former director of homeless youth services at the Metropolitan Community Church of New York. The church has a shelter, catering to homeless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth. Michaels is also a photographer and gave Lehrer permission to set up a studio to work with the teens at the shelter.

An American University of Washington, D.C. student, Dean has been a large contributor to the project.

“Going into the shelter with Josh on location absolutely blew my mind,” Dean said.

Lehrer is in the second phase of his project featuring the collection “Becoming Visible”, and has created a fundraiser on www.kickstarter.com, where a minimum of $30,000 of donations is needed for the project to be backed.

If the amount is reached by Friday, when the fundraiser closes, the donations will be used as stipends for the transgender teens, direct donation to the service organizations and as funding for Lehrer’s photographs of the teens. He will create studio and exterior portraits shot on film, which will then be enlarged into outsized platinum and palladium prints.

Lehrer said he considers these the most elegant of all photograph processes.

“I think it is very easy to take for granted our identity when we are fortunate enough to be born into the bodies we feel we belong in,” Lehrer said. “Really believing there is more to the human experience than ‘am I a boy or a girl?’ is the key. Humanity encompasses more shades of gray.”

Regarding gender-neutral housing on college campuses, Lehrer said, “We will look back on this generation and laugh. All campuses should already have gender-neutral housing.”

Using his photographs as a means of social change, Lehrer said they provides the audience the ability to connect with a human face.

“Seeing an image makes it impossible for us to turn away and dismiss it,” Lehrer said. “It shifts the way we think and talk about things.”

CMU journalism Professor Kent Miller said multimedia pieces such as Lehrer’s photographs are able to get across the emotional aspect much faster.

“Writing gives context, background information and killer quotes, but photojournalism is brutal by nature,” Miller said. “Honesty can affect social change, and that’s really exciting for photographers.”

Dean said many of the transgender teens Lehrer photographed were at the art gallery opening.

“The whole point of the project is to give a beautiful sense and give back to the community,” Dean said. “This is everywhere, and the images are making people see that.”