Jim Goldberg, Raised by Wolves [Paperback]

Jim Goldberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1995

Raised by wolves Kurzinfo: Goldbergs now famous book about Runaways in the US. Portraits, bed stuff, objects, letters (all that in pictures) plus interviews and facsimile writing by youngsters who do not write much. It's not Weegee and not Larry Clark

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A large-format book about runaway and thrown-away kids, Jim Goldberg's Raised by Wolves sets new standards for documentary photography. Developing approaches employed in his landmark 1985 book Rich and Poor, Goldberg spent months on Los Angeles and San Francisco streets photographing and interviewing his adolescent subjects. Interviews with social workers, police and, most of all, with the adolescent subjects themselves lend dimension to this harrowing picture of American street life and the adversarial institutional culture surrounding it. At the book's heart lie two brilliant but doomed adolescents, Tweeky Dave and Echo; their sad romance lends enormous emotional impact to the book. (Scalo/D.A.P., dist.; Oct., $45 ISBN 1-881616-50-9)

Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This unflinching, often shocking photographic portrait of teenage runaways in Los Angeles and San Francisco forgoes both the critical distance of the cautionary tale and the banality of the morality play. Instead, Goldberg forges a more personal, and therefore more horrifying, path. His photographs portray in numbing detail the lives of a loosely knit group of young people, as they shoot heroin, turn tricks, and show off their tattoos. Though photographs dominate the book, a significant portion is devoted to text: interviews, confessionals, and even reproductions of the subjects' writings and drawings. Goldberg is friends with his subjects, and in interviews they refer to him by name. He gets involved with their parents and social workers with varying degrees of success. Goldberg's work, completed between 1987 and 1993, will be exhibited in conjunction with the book's release and will tour the United States until late 1997. One complaint: many of the photographs bleed into the gutter, making them harder to view; a little border would have made a difference. Still, this group portrait is highly recommended for art photography collections.?Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 315 pages
• Publisher: Scalo Publishers; 2nd Scalo ed edition (October 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1881616509
• ISBN-13: 978-1881616504
• Product Dimensions: 12.2 x 9.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #588,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars With savage beauty, Goldberg does justice to his subjects., January 8, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Bellingham, Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jim Goldberg, Raised by Wolves (Paperback)

Goldberg documented street kids of San Francisco and Hollywood over the course of ten years. His work reflects the effort and emotion of that period. Unlike previous attempts to document homeless youth, Goldberg never sensationalized or objectified the kids he worked with. The text maintains individual voices, never judging, never interpreting, simply transmitting narratives that mainstream society would otherwise never hear. His photography radiates relationships of trust: he allows kids to illustrate their issues and amplify their voices, sharing their stories, artwork, and writings, without ever speaking for them. Such justice is rarely provided to an oppressed population. "Raised by Wolves" incites the reader's tears, anguish, and outrage - but also joy, that someone was able to successfully provide a platform for such truths to be heard. Goldberg more than did his part in attempting to educate America. The greater issue is, will we listen?

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real eye opener. Wonderfully put together., March 30, 2000

By 

Nicolas Pottier - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jim Goldberg, Raised by Wolves (Paperback)

This isn't your ordinary coffee table book. Jim Goldberg delves into the lives of homeless kids living on the street, cataloging and following two kids through his collage of pictures and stories. Although it's hard to resist just leafing through it's pages, the real message and story is in reading the book from cover to cover. Jim Goldberg ties the pictures together with stories, giving you a real sense of what these kids go through, what their motivations are, what their daily lives are like.

I volunteer helping out homeless kids in Seattle, and from what I've seen this book does a good job of accurately protraying these children, including why they're on the street. He's unbiased and uncensored in his view, I think echo's review reflecting this (one of the kids followed in the book) only stands as a testament of this.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth Buying!, December 21, 1999

By 

Tina L. Palmer "TinaSe" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jim Goldberg, Raised by Wolves (Paperback)

This is an eye-opening book full of amazing photographs that will leave you FEELING what these kids and adults are and have gone through living on the streets of San Francisco. Not too often are you experiencing so many emotions as you will when you flip page through page through this book. I can't say much more but it is worth the money...you will experience something that many of us are fortunate to have not experienced.