“Galano set out on a journey…to show an unseen face of the homeless population in New York City. The thirty-two–year-old Italian photographer was convinced that people in America would be shocked if they saw what he saw on the city sidewalks…that the homeless were not so different from anyone that he knew.”
—Lynda Richardson, The New York Times
For five years, photographer Salvo Galano visited a park near the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen in New York. There, tens of thousands of homeless men, women, and children have gathered daily for food, friendship, and guidance since its inception in 1982. Galano set up a makeshift studio with a simple burlap backdrop and photographed the fascinating characters he encountered, documenting their stories of love, loss, and survival.
Sidewalk Stories, Galano’s moving testimony to the power of the human spirit, showcases some of New York City’s most remarkable individuals—the homeless—and their integrity and courage despite the stigma of homelessness. Accompanied by mind-boggling, up-to-the-minute statistics on this dire situation, Sidewalk Stories illustrates that homelessness could happen to any of us: Naval Academy cadets, policemen, performers, inventors, grandmothers, families, and the disabled. But as Galano writes, “Homeless does not necessarily mean hopeless.”
“How do we begin to address the crisis? Like Salvo, I believe it requires a new vision. In this vision, providing for America’s most vulnerable citizens becomes a personal and national priority. But to construct that vision we must first learn how to see the hungry, poor, and homeless as people like ourselves. Within the photographs that comprise Sidewalk Stories, we are given the cues for this kind of seeing.”
—Jeff Bridges
“Salvo Galano’s remarkable, moving photographs cut through the stereotypes, the hopelessness, the collective amnesia about our homeless neighbors. They make us look, make us really see these courageous, struggling individuals—not as statistics, not as myths.”
—Patrick Markee
Proceeds from the sales of Sidewalk Stories will be donated to the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen.
—Lynda Richardson, The New York Times
For five years, photographer Salvo Galano visited a park near the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen in New York. There, tens of thousands of homeless men, women, and children have gathered daily for food, friendship, and guidance since its inception in 1982. Galano set up a makeshift studio with a simple burlap backdrop and photographed the fascinating characters he encountered, documenting their stories of love, loss, and survival.
Sidewalk Stories, Galano’s moving testimony to the power of the human spirit, showcases some of New York City’s most remarkable individuals—the homeless—and their integrity and courage despite the stigma of homelessness. Accompanied by mind-boggling, up-to-the-minute statistics on this dire situation, Sidewalk Stories illustrates that homelessness could happen to any of us: Naval Academy cadets, policemen, performers, inventors, grandmothers, families, and the disabled. But as Galano writes, “Homeless does not necessarily mean hopeless.”
“How do we begin to address the crisis? Like Salvo, I believe it requires a new vision. In this vision, providing for America’s most vulnerable citizens becomes a personal and national priority. But to construct that vision we must first learn how to see the hungry, poor, and homeless as people like ourselves. Within the photographs that comprise Sidewalk Stories, we are given the cues for this kind of seeing.”
—Jeff Bridges
“Salvo Galano’s remarkable, moving photographs cut through the stereotypes, the hopelessness, the collective amnesia about our homeless neighbors. They make us look, make us really see these courageous, struggling individuals—not as statistics, not as myths.”
—Patrick Markee
Proceeds from the sales of Sidewalk Stories will be donated to the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen.
