The Dispossessed

Carolyn Harper Cohen’s work has a strong social justice component to it as she creates images of people or groups who have been marginalized, discriminated against, or abused. Each of the works in this exhibit is of a particular Philadelphian who is homeless; many are children. The works provide faces to those who are faceless, nameless and powerless, and bear witness to those who are suffering. The beauty that the artistic process brings to the images creates a tension with the inherent cruelty of the lives of the subjects; in admiring the works, the viewer becomes almost complicit in their abuse and neglect.