RAISED BY WOLVES by Jim Goldberg
Raised by Wolves is a photojournalist book that American photographer Jim Goldberg published in 1995 and shines a light on a group of individuals who have been forgotten by mainstream society.
It chronicles the lives of different runaways and homeless teenagers whose existence is coloured by addiction, abuse and violence in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
This book includes 320 pages full of real files such as film photography, original texts, drawings and personal diary entries, among others.
Collected over ten years (1985-1995) the book tells the stories of these young people who have been ignored and exist on the edge of society.
The book quickly became a classic, and therefore the original is unavailable—raw and heartbreaking, like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
This book is eye-opening and produces empathy for people whose experiences are very different from the mainstream; highlighting the importance of not forgetting those living on the fringes of society.
Born in 1953, Connecticut, Jim Goldberg has been taking photographs since 1975 and is known for documenting the ignored, or outcast populations.
“Sleazy old me. jacking off in front of me, you have to get high to do it.”
“Sometimes remembering ain’t no fun.”
“I’m dave, who the fuck are you. you need me 2 feel superior. I need you to laugh at.”
“My mom was a 15-year-old junkie slut who I ain’t never seen. My old man is a biker from hell. the fucked up asshole shot me in the gut when I was ten years old. ain’t gone home since or had one”
“Walking around for hours and hours and not being able to stop. Freezing all the time-exhausted, dazed. After two weeks I didn’t even remember why I ran away.”
“I called my parents a year ago and they said good luck and have a nice life and that’s all. Just don’t come back home.”
“For my 12th B-day, my old man grabbed me and gave me a carton of smokes and a sheet of acid. Looking back now I would have rather gotten a hug but the only time my father would put his hands on me would be to beat the shit out of me.
The next day I went to school and dropped 5 hits in my teachers office when she had turned her back. Few minutes later she started writing all strange shapes and figures on the board and passed out. The nun was out for a week.”
“I was always told the story that the reason that I was born so long after my brother and sister was because my mother refused to have another child until there was an extra bathroom in the house at 1945 Chapel. But I don’t think that this story was true.
By the time I was a teenager, my brother and sister were out of the house. My parents and I didn’t know how to deal with each other. Also, there was the Omnipresence of my father‘s illness- us never knowing when it would get the best of him.
In 1968, our families whole candy business was forced to relocate because the city was going to build I-91 and I-95 right through its location on Olive Street. There were race riots in my school. The Black Panthers were on trial in New Barren, and the entire downtown was encircled by SWAT teams. The Puritan dream was dying, and something was taking its place.
One night when I was 16, I had taken two of Jake SterlingSterling’s diet pills, and I came out home tweaked out of my mind. I woke up my sleeping parents and begged them to talk to me, to “ask me any questions that and hat they wanted to ask, that I was an open book to them.”
The next morning we shared quiet disappointment that things had gone back to the same old ways.”
“Daddy fucking me.”
“It’s not like you can go home and watch TV.”
“Born a wicked child. Raised by wolves. A screaming kamakazi. I never will crash.”