In 1980 Oraien Catledge, who has a visual disability, decided to take up photography and dedicated himself to a project he called "Cabbagetown," named after the area just east of downtown Atlanta. Located in the heart of Cabbagetown, the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill (now transformed into artist lofts) closed its doors in the early 1970s, but the predominantly white, Appalachian workforce remained in the neighborhood. In May 1980 the process of gentrification began, as developers moved in to transform the area. Intrigued by this story and the people, Catledge decided to document the community before it changed irrevocably. Over the next fifteen years he produced more than 15,000 negatives of the architecture, street life and people of Cabbagetown. Children dominate the photographs, which seem to demonstrate how endemic poverty strips faces of softness and innocence early in life.