I had been dumb enough to register a desk at this place called ‘Grisk’ to be in an environment with other creatives. Trouble with modern creatives is their greed and willingness to exploit others, even harvest them, for their own gain. Grisk was just another place with people that were less than genuine - and in the end, not very creative.
But this story is not about them. Grisk was close to where the homeless hung out, and in the months I was there, I saw things get progressively worse - and now we are even passing a law, so they can be removed from places so ‘good people’ do not have to look at them. This law would serve better if it stopped ‘event marketing’ in the streets - you know the assholes who stop you and want money for a cause or indeed wants you to change phone company or some other trivial crap, so a CEO somewhere can make more. Those, apparently, need to be here, as they are important to society.
One day when leaving Grisk, I checked out a reflection as I sometimes do. This time a fresh puddle of rain. As I experimented shortly with perspective and distance, I started getting looks - anyone that shoots street and abstract know what I am talking about. You will get people trying to see what you are seeing, looking at the same place or in the same direction - and they see nothing. Which always makes me chuckle. This is what I saw:
I hear a voice behind me ‘you should take a picture of me’ - I go ‘sure’ and turn around and click to see a rather surprised man. He was clearly homeless. He could not grasp why I was pointing the lens toward a puddle. I asked if all he saw was the puddle and not the reflections in it. He looked a bit befuddled, then smiled - I am sure he was not used to people reacting to him this way, which is just heartbreaking. Sometimes it is the simplest things that opens a whole new world for someone - and we need reflection - we need to reflect on why some people end up on the streets, why a lot are poor, why we let fat cat CEOs run away with it all and why we elect the people we do. Now, I, in all fairness, did not open a new world to this guy - but I interacted with him, I ‘saw’ and ‘heard’ him and I gave him a little bit of myself. I hope he gets off the streets.
…well, you kind of asked for it ;)
Both shots are unedited if memory serves. I normally have qualms about shooting the homeless or destitute. It seems invasive to me and as an empath, I do not find it very easy to depict people in squalor - because my brain screams ‘why’ at me. If you are not an empath, I do not know how to describe it to you.