For most of a decade, cultural support worker and photographer Ken Armstrong used his camera to capture the despair of the homeless and their fight for survival on the street.
“They don’t have a voice, so by them allowing me into their lives I’m able to tell their story, which otherwise wouldn’t have been able to get out.”
Many of the black-and-white images reveal the disturbing effects of addiction.
“You know they can’t face those demons they have inside of them. They can’t face those traumas that happened to them. They have to be in an impaired state to sleep.”
Now he’s hoping the images will help others understand that despair.
The common theme, he said, is the residual trauma of Canada’s residential school system.
“We hear what residential schools did to people. But when you see it, and when you see it in black and white, and you see the actual person and hear their stories, I think it touches parts of you that wouldn’t get touched by reading it in a textbook.”
The photographs also go beyond the streets to illustrate the hope of those working to win back the culture and identity that residential schools tried to erase.
