Recycling (In at the Left, Out at the Right)

Thanks for the compliment.

 

I was unaware others were photographing my same subjects, however.

 

I'd like to see some to compare. Maybe a few links here (or sent privately . . . .)

 

Thanks.

 

John (Crosley)

No, I meant many people photograph homeless guys searching in the garbage or sleeping on the street but in your pictures they are always part of a bigger picture and well placed inside of a contest... I realized how many pictures on this subject I throw out because they just don't mean anything, they only have a documentary value, but I am not interested in that.

Take care

Antonio B.

 

Just about anyone can find a bum somewhere, and evermore in the United States since the Supreme Court struck down so-called 'vagrancy' laws, which made it 'illegal' to 'wander about aimlessly' with 'no money' or 'obvious means of support' -- which was a genteel way of saying 'give the police an excuse to run anyone out of town they didn't like who couldn't prove employment and mostly was used against black individuals.

 

For instance the people of Rogue River, Oregon, bragged to other (whites) from the rest of Oregon, 'we run the (N)iggers out before sundown' and thought little of it. The same happened in Winnemucca, Nevada, and on my watch when I was with the Associated Press, though I never learned of it -- they had draconian sentences for anyone they didn't like who was of another color and that was everyone, including the black workers for the railroad who maintained the rails. One poor guy had his carpet vacuumed and was sentenced to four years state prison for 'four seeds of marijuana' found in the vacuum bag -- they supposedly were his, but could have easily have been planted.

 

Years later, the City's actions were found to be part of a giant conspiracy against blacks, and the city was mulcted for a huge damage suit in a class action on behalf of all blacks, but that sort of attitude was prevalent across much of middle America and the South. Only on the Coasts, the big industrial cities and in central cities where there were large numbers of blacks, could the blacks find some safety, perhaps in their large numbers and perhaps in the fact the economies depended in part on them. The Courts gave them little protection, as police, judges and the citizenry routinely were prejudiced, even after 'Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas' decided in 1954 which supposedly outlawed 'Jim Crow' laws by defining 'separate but equal' as being 'illegal'.

 

It took the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s with Martin Luther King to put real teeth in to beginning to unwind Jim Crow, and it still is ongoing today.

 

In the meantime, the legacy is a growing number of bums and no-accounts on American streets, and there is a legacy of the same in other countries as well, as the idea of freedom to be a beggar has settled in a large number of other countries that had not tolerated such before -- it was not an idea that thrived under Calvinist standards, which supposed anyone who was homeless or not working to be a no-account, lazy and in general immoral and 'shiftless' though that frequently is not the case at all -- it's a place where those who cannot make it in society 'end up'.

 

Especially the psychiatrically disabled which were thrown out of mental hospitals when the psycho-pharmaceutical revolution allowed them to be closed, but no provisions were made for placing those who were freed under alternative care that was significant -- hence, many ended up on the streets, unable to care for themselves (in between hospitalizations).

 

I see a great deal of beauty and harmony on the street sometimes, and since 'street people' are always on the street, they often end up as actors in my photos. If the woman above tosses her trash, the man to the right was reading a newspaper in the trash before this photo was taken -- it wasn't trash to him - he hadn't read that newspaper before -- it was fresh news to him. It isn't garbage until all who have used it have used it, then discarded it. He hadn't. To him it still had value.

 

And there can be that beauty I see sometimes, such as I noted earlier with the two men sleeping at night on a Paris Metro bench under neath the sign Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which I hope you have looked at.

 

I don't see of feel any pity for those men when I look at that sign. I see beauty and harmony. I was there, it was cold and dampish, but better than outside and they were warm enough and protected. One man looks like he has alopecia (a hair disease or perhaps a worse disease, because of missing clumps of hair, and that is frightening, but there is an overall harmony to that photo that belies the circumstances -- the two men in near perfect symmetry as they sleep in the Metro.

 

The man passed out on his back in an entrance to the Kyiv, Ukraine Metro, his beggars cup still upright (begging while passed out) is important to me for its tones -- its blending from blacks to whites and the grayscale in between. It is a good example of the good use of a grayscale photograph and gets much of its value from being a good reproduction rather than just from its content, although the content is very important.

 

Almost anybody can take a photo of a bum, and there's no sport in that. I don't generally do that. I take the photos for social comment and to show the character that often comes out in the human face when there is distress. Witness my recent posting of two older women begging together and their imploring, beseeching, very distressed faces as they face on comers -- a true winner in my book (and in raters, too).

 

If I were at Ascot, I'd be taking photos of people in fancy hats and finery, and that would be that, but I'm not, and I'm not invited to too many garden parties. So I make do with what's available. If anybody wants to start inviting me to social events, I'm happy to attend to round out my portfolio.

 

I met a photographer not too long ago (this Spring) who took a wonderful photo of San Francisco's society gala -- the Black and White ball. He took a wonderful classic -- a photo of high society matrons and debs while a short guy with a huge patter full of meals and a face contorted from the strain of lifting that huge tray passed directly in front of the camera, for a photo that was surely a lifetime best. If I had a link, I'd link it here now. The photographer was then working for a S.F. daily, and regrettably, I think all his copyrights are owned by the paper. He had wonderful work, worthy of a book, and some was on a website, but I can't find the reference. Wonderful street work.

 

Whether it's bums or debs, doesn't matter to me. What matters is making a good, telling photo, which people can look at and say 'wow, that's a great capture'. I keep trying and occasionally I succeed.

 

I may take hundreds of thousands of photos to just get a few of those photos, but those photos may be around in a hundred of several hundred years -- testament to having caught an 'essential truth' for just a slim moment.

 

That's what this is all about.

 

That moment can be about emotions, about geometry, about shadows and highlights, about colors, blurs and other things relating to the use and play of light or a number of others things -- they needn't all be representational captures as above.

 

They just need to be good, and that is something that sometimes defies description.

 

It's just that when it's 'good' -- people can 'see' it and recognize it.

 

(of course it's something beyond supersaturated beach sunsets or long time exposure photos of the ocean where the ocean surface assumes a certain mistiness and evanescence -- two views which are photographic cliches.)

 

I figure, just take and post what's interesting, and try not to copy anyone else more than your curiosity tells you too, and nurture your own photographic curiosity -- you'll soon enough learn to anticipate what people will do before they even know themselves what they will do (trust me, I often know what people will do before they do it, and position myself to capture it, before they have decided precisely what it is they are going to do . . . .)

 

;~))

 

Or, as above, I see possibilities that begin to unfold and I begin to watch and snap until those possibilities unfold, reach their apogee, then literally fall apart as the actors walk away.

 

Here, I got lots of shots.

 

Sometimes, I get just one.

 

You never know.

 

It keeps this part of photography as 'sport'.

 

John (Crosley)

A great image with a message. Warm regards form Miami.

I stood across the street, when the older man was reading the newspaper inside the dumpster, but it was put down before the woman came to dump her trash. That would in my view have been a better photo.

 

But life is full of 'could have beens', and this surely is more than good enough -- it makes the point and has the symmetry and 'style' that brings 'art' as I view it, into 'street' - a merger I always am seeking.

 

Thanks for the very nice comment.

 

John (Crosley)