The volume documents the American urban fabric of the late 70’s in Uptown Chicago and Bowery New York.
«I wanted to see, to try to touch at least with my camera the experience of loss», recalls Traub. The intent was not to satisfy a sort of voyeurism, but to witness the dignity and humanity of the homeless. In those years, being homeless was more often the result of an individual destiny. Today it is rather the outcome of great social disparities.
Indifference and gentrification have displaced those who once inhabited the missions and shelters that nurtured and held them together in a storied bond. They formed a fabled tribe and were known to their neighbors by their names, eccentricities and their plight. Nelson Algren’s famous book A Walk on the Wild Side asks why “lost people sometimes develop to greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their lives.” Traub’s Skid Row confirms this and these inhabitants’ part in the central fabric of the city.
