Image courtesy of Gary Clark

Well-known photoblogger mashuga (a.k.a. Gary Clark) will show and talk about his street portraits on Saturday, January 21st at Positive Focus Gallery in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Clark, an award-winning artist and teacher, began taking digital photos and recording the stories of homeless men and women in Manhattan and Wilkes Barre, PA five years ago.

Looking for a quick and inexpensive way to share his pictures, Clark took the handle “mashuga” (Yiddish for “crazy” – he had once asked a homeless man for permission to take his picture, and the man had replied, “Whattayou, mashuga?”) and began posting at fotolog.com. His page (http://www.fotolog.com/mashuga/) took off, receiving thousands of visitors a week and engendering a passionate, often furious, international debate about homelessness, right to privacy, mental health, alcohol and drug abuse, the role of government and other topics. So far a total of over 1.5 million people from all over the world have visited “Mashuga’s fotolog” on the web.

For more background and a critique of Clark’s work, go here. A fascinating piece on his working methods, including audio, can also be found at National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

Mashuga’s slide show and discussion starts at 4 pm at Positive Focus, 111 Front Street in DUMBO. Admission is $5. See the Positive Focus website for directions.