Beyond Stereotypes - portraits in recognition of World Homeless Day
World Homeless Day is observed on the 10th of October this year - I must admit I had no idea it was even a thing!
A few months ago I hired Carol Miller Media to support the PR for my upcoming exhibition ‘Who We Are’ and she put me in touch with York Road Project in Woking, a charity dedicated to supporting people dealing with homelessness. Carol felt that there was an opportunity for me to do a bit of giving back, by helping York Road raise awareness about the challenges faced by those they help.
Tam told me how getting his dog to keep him company in his new flat, has changed his life.
York Road is much more than a shelter. They support individuals on many levels, with advice and help navigating the complexity of accessing government services, short and long term housing, life skills and mental health support.
York Road Project’s CEO Cherisse Dealtry and I quickly found some common ground. My interest has always been in individuals, in showcasing the unique and authentic identities of those I photograph. Cherisse explained that a common challenge they face is that people stop seeing homeless people as individuals. They have a set picture of a homeless person and while they may sympathise and donate money to aid them, this is not based on truly seeing the individual and their unique circumstances and experiences. Photographs that appear in newspapers often trade on the stereotype of the rough sleeper, with a pained and haunted expression. The reality is that homelessness and housing insecurity is much more than this image.
Danny and I talked about how a trip to the beach makes you feel like things are turning around
I was keen to help, though I confess I was a little nervous as I headed into Woking on the day of the shoot. I have no personal experience of homelessness and could take only a desire to learn from those working at and benefiting from York Road Project. Having thought a lot about what Cherisse said, I had decided to take an approach of treating each session with each person, just like I would a studio session with a client. I wanted to abstract the individuals from that rough sleeper image, and bring out their personality and story in a style that was more empowering for them, and more ambigious for the viewer. By that, I mean that you cannot tell these people are or have been homeless simply from the image. What you see is a person - their style, their story and not their situation. I wanted the images to look like something that could appear in a film or music magazine, were they of famous people.
Jaro told me how an accident that ruined his dexterity put him out of work, but that he’s striving to be creative
Importantly I wanted these people to feel comfortable, to be able to talk about themselves in a positive way and to be able to tell their own story. I wanted them to have images that they could be proud of.
I set up a simple black background with good window light and added two LED lights for a bit of extra punch. I knew that I wanted to make these images black and white, so getting enough texture and contrast was key.
Normally I would have used flash, but knowing that people might be a bit nervous I opted for the calmer set up of LEDs and a higher iso to compensate - in this case I was absolutely fine having a bit of extra grain in the shots
It was brilliant meeting everyone at York Road and I think they enjoyed themselves too. It was difficult to get folk talking about themselves at first - when I asked them to tell me about what made them happy or what was unique about them, I was met with some blank stares. This isn’t unique to this situation by any means, lots of people find it hard to talk about themselves positively. But I’m persistent and I learnt so much about everyone I photographed, and in many cases we had a lot of common interests - from art and music, to sports and pets - I really enjoyed talking with everyone.
Colin and I talked about exhibitions for a long time - he gave me some brilliant recommendations!
Cherisse had the idea to include some text with the images, that captured the person’s reflections on who they are and what they want people to know. This chimed strongly with me because while I’ve been working on Who We Are, where the images are also accompanied by words about the person featured, I’ve come to realise the limitations and potential problems of relying solely on an image. An image is only ever part of a story, one side of a person, one moment in time. I strive to represent a lot about who the person is in all my portraits, but it’s never complete.
In some ways I was playing with that in this series of images, deliberately not showing the one thing that all these people have in common, and focusing instead on what makes them special. Adding the text gives the viewer so much more to think about and I hope it communicates that homelessness is just a situation, it does not define these people. It could genuinely happen to anyone, a twist of circumstances could be all it takes.
My work with York Road Project featured in The Big Issue and Woking News & Mail and will be shown as an exhibition at Surrey Heritage Centre in November.