Gerry Yaum

245 Portage Ave

Open for viewing Fridays and Saturdays noon to 4pm. Plus during Design Fest Events.

There is an ERROR in the program. The show is NOT at 354 Portage ave.

Family and Survival

Edmonton photographer Gerry Yaum has been photographing Burmese refugees with various photographic formats for about ten years.

The men and women photographed in THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE UNDER THE FREEWAY live in slum rooms and shacks under or near an active freeway in Bangkok’s notorious Klong Toey neighbourhood. Existing on the edge of society, they are often forgotten by their peers and abandoned by their families and loved ones. Daily, they battle to survive in an over-populated city swarming with well over 10 million people.

Those who appear in the photographic series THE FAMILIES OF THE DUMP make up a group of over fifty families who work and live in or around the Mae Sot, Thailand garbage dump. Life at the dump is better than living in Burma where the Karen and Mon ethnic groups sought independent lands - but lost against a powerful system.

The Burmese (Myanmar) government has essentially exiled these people from their homelands, and Thailand only tolerates their settlement on land nobody else wants: under freeways and on garbage dumps. The story of attempting to extinguish a people, then moving them off their own land, persecuted, and ignored has sad parallels all around the world including Canada.

“The pictures are a perfect circle of artistic life. First, photos are made of life in the dump. Once people in the West, Canada, my friends and co-workers, see the work online, they are encouraged to donate money, hats, boots and toys. The goods go directly back to help the people in the photos; no middleman, no waste.

When people donate money, I track and document how it is used on my blog. I keep this money in a separate bank account and use it to buy rubber
boots, headlamps, toys, food, candy, tools, and medicines from a variety of sellers and stores in nearby Mae Sot town. I then haul everything (bit by bit) on my rented motorbike out to the dump and give it to the people I have come to know and document. We have raised about $6500 CAD to help the families, all because of the photos made.

No photos; no help. The photos are a force for good.” Gerry Yaum