Tramp Trail 2005

Meet Cory Lucius, one of our graduate students. He is the one in the foreground. I asked Cory to tell the Brain Drain Club about his senior undergraduate thesis project (Cory has a bachelor degree in art; his medium is photography).

His presentation blew us all away. Cory spent 3 years getting to know the homeless community in Memphis. His project, titled Tramp Trail, aimed to give voice to the forgotten and discarded. Cory took over a thousand images of the homeless, and recorded hours of conversations. Sometimes things got a bit dicey, and he had to run. His acquaintances were often drunk or high. Some were mentally ill, others in deep depression. Many were smart and eloquent. The name Tramp Trail is what the homeless call their daily pilgrimage from church that serves breakfast, to the next one that serves lunch, to the one that serves dinner.

Cory's final installation was built to resemble a corner of a public bathroom. The walls served as the medium for picture display.The pictures were not developed on paper, but on square ceramic tiles using liquid emulsion (I hope I got that right). Two layers went on the tiles first for the emulsion to stick. Then the emulsion was applied, and exposed in the darkroom. The bathroom fragment had photo tiles on the two walls, and a speaker in the floor where one would expect a drain. A one hour recording of the homeless' stories looped through the speaker. A wall mirror and a sink completed the composition. Some tiles were black, others were missing. The whole installation was very carefully arranged and the result was heart-wrenching.

On the picture above you see Cory and Hopz listening to the recorded stories from Cory's laptop.

To learn a bit more about the project (and to buy a self-published book if you so fancy), go here.