Sorry, everyone, it’s been a while since I last blogged and I apologize! I’ve been SOOOOO sick. For those who don't know, I have asthma but it’s usually dormant. Once a year or so, generally at the beginning of the year when it’s still winter (aka between 60-70 degrees in Texas), I’ll come down with a cold or sinus infection and it will trigger my ASTHMA OF DOOM. I can’t breathe, I can’t stop coughing, I can’t seem to clear out whatever is stuck in my throat. It’s terrible. This year, the plague snuck up on me in March and it pummeled me. At one point I think I had strep, asthma and an ear infection all at the same time. It was UGLY. I think I even worked two weddings in the middle of that funk and looking back, I don’t know how I managed to not drop from exhaustion and the effort of trying to breathe. LOL. But seriously, I decided I needed to rest and get better so I put blogging on hold and now I’m back!
Today I want to bare my soul and tell you about an idea for a project I've been thinking about for a while. I’ll start with a little background about me. I grew up very sheltered in a small, historic town on the banks of the Ohio River. I'm talking brick streets and giant sternwheelers rolling down the river. If you don't know what a sternwheeler is, think Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. There was very little cultural diversity of any kind in my town and at the time, the three economic classes (high, middle, low) were very delineated. Homelessness was unheard of, something you only witnessed when the 6 o’clock evening news referenced a big city, something you read about in the “National News” section of the local newspaper. I personally did not see my first homeless individual until I was in my early 20’s in Charleston, West Virginia, and TBH, I’m not even positive he was homeless; he was just scruffy and bedraggled and begged me for some change for coffee on the sidewalk. However, my reaction to the experience highlights my point that homelessness was not something I was accustomed to seeing, nor was it prevalent in my neighborhood or region.
All of this changed when I moved to Austin, TX in 2013. In Austin, I saw homeless men and women, shuffling down the sidewalks with blankets tied around their shoulders, pushing beaten Walmart shopping carts piled several feet high with scraps of their lives. I saw entire camps carpeting the concrete under the overpasses, some campers having only a flattened cardboard box for a sleeping surface, some with tents, others perched on chairs with their faithful canine companions lolling on the ground nearby. I used to work at the Municipal Court downtown on 7th Street. There would be scores of transients (by the way, I hate that word and I’ll explain why) sheltering under I35 across from the Court and police department. And then one day, they’d be gone – it was like a mass exodus. I later found out from a police officer through work that it was more like a mass eviction. He explained that whenever a celebrity or high-ranking individual visits Austin, a sweep is done. The homeless are arrested and brought to jail for various reasons to get them off the streets while the high status individual is in town, to give the appearance that the city does not have such a huge homeless issue. I have not personally confirmed this but I became more aware of the disappearance of the homeless camps during political seasons or when large events occurred downtown (SXSW, ACL, etc.).
I hope it’s not true that Austin tries to hide its homeless population. They are as much a part of this town and its culture and vibe as anything or anyone else. When we refer to them as transient it connotes that these people are “in between” or here for a brief stay, or temporarily without shelter. Maybe this is our attempt to avoid the shame or pity we feel toward these individuals. Why do we have a place to live and food to eat and clean clothes to wear and access to medical care but they don’t? We don’t like to face the possibility that we have failed as a society to care for our own people. It scares us to look these people in the eye and know that they could be us. We may make up reasons why they are homeless…maybe they have an addiction they refuse to get help for. Maybe they made a bad business decision and lost everything. Maybe they hurt someone in their family and were kicked out. Or maybe the truth is that there isn’t a good, definitive reason, it’s not their fault and it could happen to any of us. Maybe that’s the scariest thing of all. But calling them transient ignores the problem, IMO. They are homeless. They have no home. For some and possibly many of them, this is not a temporary issue. Some, if not many, may never recover their footing and may always be without shelter.
Anyway, I am getting off-track. My idea for a project is to chronicle the character of Austin's homeless population through photography. I want to capture the raw qualities of living life day to day without shelter, in a photojournalistic style. While I think it might be a bit unnerving to delve into that territory, I think presenting the many faces of Austin's homeless people to its citizens in startling black and white imagery would be beneficial. It would shine a light into a very dark corner of Austin's reality. It may even direct enough attention to the problem in order to generate a little more feedback and assistance from the community.
Sorry if this post seems a little dark to some. I just wanted to give you all some background to my inspirations.
