The forty-nine photographs in Through Different Eyes: The Faces of Poverty in Virginia document the private lives of twenty-first-century Virginians who are living in low-income circumstances. But they are more than that: they are evidence that reflects not only our collective guilt as a society but also our collective responsibility to our neighbors. The photographers, some of whom document this world from within their own experience, share with us images and stories that are about dignity, hope and sometimes simple acceptance. 

The work by these photographers create visual conversations about what it means to be poor in modern-day Virginia. While often eloquent and lyrical, all of these images ask us to carry our conversations out of the gallery until photographs such as these are documents of a past no longer experienced by any citizen of the Commonwealth.                                                              -Jeffery Allison, Curator