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Leah Denbok

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Leah Denbok (born May 8, 2000) is a Canadian photographer, author, speaker, humanitarian, and social activist. Since 2015 Leah has taken on a mission to change the general public’s, often, negative perception of people experiencing homelessness.[edit]

Contents[edit]

  • Life and career
  • Critical Praise
  • Style and technique
  • Exhibitions
  • Filmography
  • Articles
  • Selected Works
  • References

Life and career[edit]

Leah is a resident of Collingwood, ON, Canada. Collingwood is a small town (pop. 21,793) located 164 km north/west of Toronto. When she was 12-years-old she bought a used Canon EOS Rebel T2i from a local pawnshop and began taking pictures of common subjects, such as pets, children, and flowers. She learned the basics of photography by watching the DVD course Fundamentals of Photography by Joel Sartore, a National Geographic photographer and Fellow. However, Leah lacked confidence in her photographs and considered quitting. Concerned, her father, Tim, arranged for a consultation via Skype between her and Sartore. Sartore recognized Leah’s potential and encouraged her to continue. In fact, a year after her first consultation with him, Sartore emailed Leah’s father stating, “If [Leah] sticks with it, I think she’s well on her way to becoming not just a good photographer, but a great photographer.”

In 2015 Sartore encouraged Leah to focus on portraiture, believing that this was where her real talent lay. She first began photographing senior citizens in nursing homes. However, this soon became impractical because of the difficulty of securing consent. It was then that Leah’s father came across the work of British photographer Lee Jeffries, known for his photographs of people experiencing homelessness. Tim suggested Leah follow Jeffries’s example. At first, taken aback by the idea, soon afterward Leah, accompanied by her father, was in Toronto photographing people experiencing homelessness. Leah always asks her models for their permission before taking their photograph. Furthermore, she and her father always make a point of paying their models $10 for sitting for them.

Leah and her father have photographed and interviewed people experiencing homelessness in North America and Australia. These photographs and stories have been published in two books: Nowhere to Call Home—Photographs and Stories of People Experiencing Homelessness, Volume One and Two. Leah donates 100% of the royalties from the sale of her books and photographs to homeless shelters.

Leah credits her mother’s story, in part, for inspiring her to photograph people experiencing homelessness.17 At the age of three Leah's mother, Sara, was found wandering the crowded, dirty streets of Kolkata, India, by a police officer. Knowing that Mother Teresa (known within the Catholic Church now as Saint Teresa) never turned any children away, the officer took Sara to Mother Teresa who raised her in her orphanage Nirmala Shishu Bhavan until, at the age of five, she was adopted by a family from Stayner, ON.

Leah’s breakthrough came in July of 2017 when CBC’S ‘The National’ aired a mini-documentary about her[1]. Since then Leah has attracted both national and international attention. She has been featured  by such media as: CTV[2], BBC[3], Toronto Life[4], The Toronto Star[5], 7Days (a Dutch weekly newspaper), Chatelaine, Daily Chronicle (Las Vegas), Victoria Life, The Agenda With Steve Paikin[6], as well as a two page spread in the Corriere della Sera, Italy's largest daily newspaper. In September of 2017 Leah spoke to 40,000 people at the Air Canada Centre for the WE Day and WE Family events, sharing the stage with such dignitaries as Prince Harry and Kofi Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations. Leah attended Art Crawl NY, 2017 as the guest of David Giffen, the event’s organizer. In April of 2018 Leah was flown, all expenses paid, to speak, exhibit her photography, and have a book signing at the Women of the World Festival in Brisbane, Australia.

In the Fall of 2018 Leah began a four-year Bachelor of Photography program at Sheridan College in Oakville, ON.

Critical praise[edit]

As the following examples show, Denbok’s photography has received much critical praise:

  • “[Leah's portraits] are beautiful, touching and real." —Lana Šlezić, photojournalist and filmographer
  • “This is a young woman with an obviously high emotional quotient, mega talent, and a terrific eye for humanizing homeless people on the streets who are so often overlooked, or looked-over as subhuman.”26—Alex Zafer, street photographer and videographer
  • "I encourage all to experience the ... amazing photography of Leah Denbok, a young woman who sees into the soul of the homeless."27— The Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario
  • “If it’s true that your eyes are a window to your soul, a Collingwood photographer has figured out how to capture and depict the souls of some of society’s most vulnerable.”28—Toronto Star
  • “Leah denBok is just 17 years old, but she has the eye of an old soul. Her photographs of people who are living on the street are both sage and commanding; it is impossible to stop looking at them, searching their faces, absorbing their massive emotional power.”29—Chatelaine
  • “[Leah’s] photographs are not great photographs for a teenager to have taken; they are great photographs, and a teenager has taken them.”30—Daily Chronicle
  • “[Leah] is … an emerging superstar….”31—Geoffrey Jordan, commercial photographer
  • “If [Leah] sticks with it, I think she’s well on her way to becoming not just a good photographer, but a great photographer. And I’m not kidding.”32—Joel Sartore, National Geographic photographer and Fellow

Style and technique[edit]

Denbok’s photographs of people experiencing homelessness, which are done in B & W with a black or white background, are extremely simple, to the point of being austere. This is done, says Denbok, for a reason. She wants nothing to distract the viewer from looking at the eyes, facial expressions, and hands of the subject in front of them. “For all of these things,” Denbok says, “tell a story. They tell a story of pain and anguish, a story of addiction, a story of rejection, a story of disappointment, a story of broken dreams, but often also a story of hope and the will to survive.”33    

Exhibitions[edit]

  • Christ’s Church Cathedral, Hamilton, ON, 2017
  • All Saints’ Anglican Church, Collingwood, ON, 2017
  • Powerhouse, Brisbane, Australia, 2018
  • Collingwood Public Library, Collingwood, ON, 2018
  • Project Space Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto, ON, 2018
  • Durham Art Gallery, Durham, ON, 2018
  • Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, ON, 2018
  • Serpa Galleries, Newmarket, ON, 2018
  • Christ’s Church Cathedral, Hamilton, ON, 2018

Filmography[edit]

  • Humanizing the Homeless: Teen’s Portraits Shed Light on Life on the Streets (2017) documentary produced by Sharon Wu for CBC’s ‘The National’
  • Homelessness in Photographs – Penny Skelton Show (2017)
  • Leah Denbok – CBC’s The Goods (2017)
  • Why this 17- year-old photographer is highlighting Canada’s homeless – CTV’s Your Morning (2017)
  • Young Ontario photographer captures hardship of homelessness – Global News (2017)
  • Portraits of Homelessness in Black and White – The Agenda With Steve Paikin (2018)
  • Collingwood teen captures homelessness through photography – Breakfast Television Toronto (2018)
  • Nowhere to Call Home – CHCH (2018)

Articles[edit]

  • 10 Beautiful Portraits of People Experiencing Homelessness by Chatelaine (2017)
  • Collingwood photographer uses art for advocacy by the Toronto Star (2017)
  • Leah Denbok: The teenager photographing Canada’s homeless by the BBC (2017)
  • This 17-year-old photographer takes striking portraits of Toronto’s homeless by  Toronto Life (2017)
  • Victoria book publisher helps teen photographer help the homeless by Victoria Life (2017)
  • Collingwood teen gets worldwide acclaim for homeless project by the Collingwood Connection (2017)  
  • Art of Compassion: Portrait Photographer Focuses on Homelessness by the Daily Chronicle (2018)
  • Leah, fotografa a 18 anni: Nei miei scatti l’um anita dei senzatello by the Corriere della Sera (Italian newspaper) (2018)    

Selected Works[edit]

  • Nowhere to Call Home—Photographs and Stories of the Homeless, Volume One, Photography and Text by Leah Denbok with Tim Denbok, 2017, Friesen Press,  ISBN   978-1-5255-1310-7
  • Nowhere to Call Home—Photographs and Stories of People Experiencing Homelessness, Volume Two, Photography and Text by Leah Denbok with Tim Denbok, 2018, Friesen Press,  ISBN   

References[edit]

References[edit]

  1. "Humanizing the homeless: Teen's portraits shed light on life on the streets | CBC News". CBC. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
  2. "A 17-year-old photographer's powerful series shines new light on Canada's homeless". ctv.ca. 2017-12-20. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
  3. Murphy, Jessica (2017-11-15). "The teenager sharing the stories of Canada's homeless". BBC News. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
  4. "Search Torontolife.com". Toronto Life. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
  5. "Collingwood photographer uses art for advocacy | The Star". thestar.com. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
  6. "Search | TVO.org". tvo.org. Retrieved 2018-10-22.


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