Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/01/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Good shot Peter, well taken...and a good discussion of your reasons. It was different times then. Peter 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 >