The Blog

Volume I: The Beginning

“Fritz Dut­ter”

Wel­come to the first edi­tion of my blog “Souls Not For­got­ten: …Stir­rings from the Street”. What start­ed as a project to define a vision for my pho­tog­ra­phy has turned into an incred­i­ble life’s jour­ney and fos­tered some very unlike­ly friendships.

It seems like yes­ter­day, I sat at my com­put­er, 4 weeks into my pho­to project try­ing to artic­u­late a vision and direc­tion for my pho­tog­ra­phy this is what I wrote:

I intend to cre­ate a pho­to series enti­tled ” the For­got­ten” with mul­ti­ple gal­leries. Each gallery will high­light a dif­fer­ent group of peo­ple in need. One group stood out above the rest, in my mind and in my heart and that was the homeless.

For me this was a depar­ture from the norm. In the past, I had done vol­un­teer work for ani­mal res­cues, dab­bling in train­ing and social­iza­tion but most­ly cre­at­ing those glam­our shots that would tug at the heart­strings of poten­tial adopters. As they say, you only have one chance to make a first impres­sion. I want­ed to save all those four-legged vic­tims of neglect and abuse. Many of them made their way home with me. It nev­er occurred to me until that very moment, to try and help my fel­low man.

And so with that my jour­ney began, one Fri­day evening armed with a bag of McDon­alds cheese­burg­ers, I ven­tured out behind a retail shop­ping plaza where a num­ber of home­less peo­ple were known to live and con­gre­gate. That’s where I met my friend Fritz Dut­ter. Our friend­ship inspired this jour­ney. What I didn’t expect was the tremen­dous impact it would have on my life. I have met many for­got­ten “souls” dur­ing this jour­ney as well as peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions that give of them­selves to help them. They are” Angels of the Homeless.”

“Fritz and Robert”

I feel very for­tu­nate to have access to this world, one that I nev­er imag­ined and one that I had many pre­con­ceived notions about. The home­less com­mu­ni­ty is very pri­vate and guard­ed, there is very lit­tle trust and with good rea­son. It’s about survival.

You see, rarely if ever, is home­less­ness a choice. When you lose your job, your house and use up all your sav­ings what do you do, where do you go? And once you’re out on the street, how do you assim­i­late back into soci­ety? How do you get a job inter­view let alone go to a job reg­u­lar­ly? How do you get ready for work when you are sleep­ing under a bridge or in an alley? Things we take for grant­ed are for them very much a lux­u­ry. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most of the sys­tems and orga­ni­za­tions are not geared to help peo­ple piece their lives back togeth­er. All they do is sup­port the sta­tus quo by pro­vid­ing food and tem­po­rary hous­ing. This in itself is not a bad thing but it is only a tem­po­rary patch and not a long-term solution.

Bat Cave

Home­less­ness hap­pens to peo­ple in all walks of life, Vet­er­ans cor­po­rate execs, chil­dren and the elder­ly. The eco­nom­ic down­turn has had a cat­a­stroph­ic effect; there are home­less peo­ple every­where you just need to open your eyes. That’ s what hap­pened to me.

My hope is that as we start the New Year, we all look com­pas­sion­ate­ly upon those who have noth­ing and nowhere to go. And we remem­ber the true mean­ing of the hol­i­days past let­ting con­cern for our fel­low man tug at our heart­strings and guide us to help.

 Quote:  “…to cre­ate images so com­pelling that they snap peo­ple out of their indifference”

-James Nachtwey