Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/01/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Very interesting and honest discussion: good image as well. In Australia, the wino/bum tag was accurate in 1972 as well. I worked in South Melbourne at Prince Henry Hospital, surrounded by Alco's We too now have the combination of Mental institutions to add to the "homeless" along with a remarkable number of children. Cheers On 20/01/2007, at 18:11, Peter Klein wrote: > The discussion of Kyle's commandment made me revisit a picture I > took almost 35 years ago. > > It was early spring, my freshman year of college. One weekend > morning, I woke up early (a rare occurrence). It was very foggy, > and I thought I might snag a moody picture or two. So I decided to > go out shooting before breakfast. I walked through Boston's Back > Bay, over Beacon Hill and ended up in the plaza at Government > Center. I turned a corner and literally almost stumbled upon this > scene: > > http://users.2alpha.com/~pklein/oldpics/homeless72.htm > > I remember looking at them, at my camera, and for a second > thinking, "should I?" I felt a little funny about it. And scared, > too--there was nobody in the plaza but them and me. But I also > felt like I had found something I wanted to preserve. I shot > several frames, at various angles. They didn't wake up, probably > more due to their blood alcohol level than the quietness of my M2's > shutter. > > Now remember, this was 1972. We didn't call men like this > "homeless" then, we called them winos or bums. This was before the > wholesale emptying of U.S. mental institutions onto the streets by > an unholy alliance of mental illness rights advocates, anti-social > service crusaders and budget-balancing bureaucrats. The homeless > that an 18 year-old Boston college student saw were mostly hard- > core alcoholics. They weren't really on our socially-conscious > radar, which was more attuned to Vietnam, civil rights and poverty > caused by racism or "the system," not the bottle. > > It was also just a few months after another practitioner of the > depicted lifestyle had stolen my backpack containing my DR > Summicron from right behind me as I photographed in the Boston > Public Gardens (I got it back a week later because I city employee > knew the culprit and figured that the bright red nylon > mountaineer's backpack he was carrying wasn't actually his). > Ironically, that same lens was on my M2. But I only thought of > that long afterward. > > I chose the frame I printed on a visual basis, not a sociological > one. Other frames showed all three of the men in the window box > "sleeping it off," along with their half-empty whisky bottles. But > this one (the closest I got) showed a scattering of shoes, a torn > elbow, the texture of a beard and stone. I liked the picture then, > and I still like it now. > > To this day, I'm not entirely sure of my motivations in taking the > picture. But I can tell you that there was no self-important inner > declaration, no "Hey, I can take a socially conscious photo." I > did feel a bit like an intruder. I felt some sympathy for the men, > along with disgust. I felt a little white-liberal guilty. But > mostly, I saw a photo, so I took it. > > --Peter > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information