Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/11/24

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Subject: Re: Migration and poverty
From: bholmes@frii.com (Ben Holmes)
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 11:52:05 -0700 (MST)

Are any of the members of the forum working in this direction? Is the Leica
still an
>adapted tool for this kind of work?
>
>Regards
>
>Oddmund
>
>

Oddmund, I've been photographing a group of indigent alcoholics in Denver
for going on eight months. Their stories are incredible and some of them
have fallen from great heights only to land where the are today - skid row.
In working downtown I stumbled across an organized dog fight and gained
entrance with the promise not to photograph the people, just the animals
(animals?). It's amazing what a Leica with a wide lens lets you get away with.

My first exposure to "street" photography was not in a book, but rather
working in a lab with a B&W printer named David Healey. D. Healey has been a
photojournalist since the early sixties and has produced and published some
of the most moving stories I've ever seen. He's almost unknown, yet
continues to produce beautiful work - all with the Leica and almost
exclusively in B&W. A few years ago in the magazine "Zoom" he had published
a story on the Mexican gangs in Los Angeles. This was before anyone cared
about the gang scene here in the US. Inspiring stuff.

He suggested that I go to Haiti in 1984, so I bought an M and spent three
months walking from Port au Prince to Cape Haitian. It was my first time in
a third world country and the experience opened my eyes. I was 18. Jean
Claude Duvalier was still in power and the signs of insurrection were
growing. What an adventure.

ben