My visual exploration and examination of homelessness in Harrisonburg is now complete. I will be posting some photos either tomorrow or next year depending on the rest of my exam schedule and the consent of those I photographed.

Stay tuned!

To say the least the son sticks out like a sore thumb (as one of the other people I was talking to described, like Marilyn Manson). His mother, however, appeared more like any of my friends’ moms. In fact, when I saw her, I assumed she was a worker or volunteer. There are so many different people who are homeless that it is astonishing. Some of my reservations are with just that: I can’t identify who is a volunteer, homeless, or just in need of a good meal but can’t afford it after they pay their rent or house payment. The mother has held multiple management positions in food services and housekeeping, but she believes no one will hire her because of the fact that she is without a home, and I agree because for some of the places she has applied, she was more than qualified for the job.

The other couple I spoke with was a Cherokee Indian couple. They also had some interesting stories and were both very friendly and helpful although she was reluctant to allow her photo to be taken. The only thing that was able to convince her to allow me to take her photo was that her husband wanted it so he could take it to the hospital with him when they took him in to assess his periodic moments of anger which is a result bipolar disorder. He also attributes much of his anger toward the oppression of the Cherokee people. He also told me to inform people at my school that he is working on creating a petition for the legalization of pot in Native American homes on the terms that it is a part of their culture, religion, and ceremonies.

After my very successful and insight time at OCP on Friday I decided to go back today during lunch again. This time I felt fairly comfortable because I knew some of the people I talked to before the weekend would again be there today. Knowing this enabled me to feel more comfortable. This doesn’t mean it was easy to strike up a conversation and the nerve to ask them if they wanted to be a part of my project. Usually though I would ask the person I previously talked with for suggestions of who might like to help me with my project next. This got rid of some of the butterflies because they would usually take me to someone they knew and by them introducing me and my project I felt more at ease. Today I only talked to one man, a gentleman in his late 50′s of early 60′s. Who used to be a commercial fisherman. He was sure a wealth of stories. He currently works for a temp agency but when they don’t have work for him he spends most of his time at OCP playing a free online game with another guy on their lap tops. He briefly said something to the effect of, “I play this game to get away.” It was kind of sad to hear him say that but I knew how true it was, especially with him telling me how he sleeps in a shed, which I can’t even imagine during these cold winter months.

Another thing that continues to shock me is how honest the people I’ve talked to are, even to a stranger like me. Something I’m finding out very quickly are that most of the people I’ve had interactions with have a good attitude, they crack jokes, and are for the most part very polite. Especially at the lunch or dinner table. However, some of these I feel are almost like a coping mechanism because once we start talking more the conversations generally get serious and the joking subsides. I know I would use jokes and humor as a coping mechanism for myself.

Despite the heaviness to this project I think it is very beneficial both to me and to the people I talk to. I get to see a whole other side to life and hear things from an entirely new perspective and they get the comfort of realizing that someone does truly care. Although this is a project and I am getting graded on this it is much much more than just that. This is an issue I am greatly angered by and am very frustrated with. This is a way for me to get closer to the issue and learn more from the people that can teach me the most about it.

With the project being so open ended I had so many options to choose from. The thing that stood out the most to me though was a topic much deeper than the average run of the mill photo project. Earlier in the semester we had looked at some work by a well known activist photographer named Sebastiao Salgado. His work encompasses many injustices around the world and this appealed to me because I have an interest in the issue of homelessness. So partly inspired by Salgado’s work, my interests, and this also being my last photography class in my college career I chose to do this more serious and meaningful topic of homelessness in Harrisonburg, VA.

At first when thinking of how to go about accomplishing my project I was unsure of where to go or who to go to. I thought a bit and came up with Our Community Place, more widely known as around here simply as OCP. Up until this point I have had only one interaction with OCP and that was simply for an event held outside of it. I knew from what people said that this was a place that served free meals to persons in the area for free and was a place homeless people could come for a place of rest, refuge, and food. (Of course it is much more than just this, but this is what I knew about it at the time of the beginning of my search for a means of completing this project)

I contacted a friend and coworker of mine who I knew volunteered their at least a few times and he referred me to one of his housemates who he knew had more connections there than he. After some dialogue I decided I would come along with my friend and the rest of his house to OCP for dinner on Wednesday evening to at least get my foot in the door and start to familiarize myself with OCP and the people that are a part of it.

Dinner was good, a surprisingly large amount of food was served, and I was definitely stuffed afterward, partly because I had already eaten because I didn’t expect to eat dinner there. That night I was introduced to several people, some people that worked and volunteered there, people that frequented there, and people that my friend’s housemate thought would be a good fit for my project. Although I wasn’t able to make a firm contact point at OCP I was able to get myself in and see who I might be working with and also seen by them as well.

I’m beginning to realize the difficulty to my project. It is not a simple thing to complete, especially with such a short time frame of about 2 weeks with partial due dates or check points in between. Now I feel like I better know what I am doing and Wednesday night was a good way for me to get that closer look. It will be hard because not everyone will want to be a part of my project and not everyone will be the same. I like things to be laid out nice and clear before I start a project but this one has so many different variables that it is impossible to have such clarity of the path or end result.

Like a lot of things I design or create, I wanted to go for a more simple lay out. I wanted something simple but striking and interesting. I thought about how I would like to make it appear as if the photos were on a black glossy stage with their reflections shining to give that feel of depth. I knew I’ve seen a site or something that did something similar but could not remember for the life of me…then it hit me, iTunes. The iTunes view “Cover Flow” looks very similar. I decided to continue with the look anyway and to add a few tweaks that I thought would give it a little better look.

In class periods prior our professor expressed how he was going to be getting more picky about how things lined up with each other and how we established a sense of order within our design comps so I made sure to pay a lot of attention to these types of details. I used lots and lots of grid lines to keep things in line and evenly spaced.

My first inner page I handed in for our first review of our design I had a closer concept to the Cover Flow view in iTunes with regards to how it has an almost circular scrolling or revolving feel but that idea was discouraged because of the difficulty. Our professor wanted our designs to actually be feasible for us to create on our own. So this Photography Page is the result of the simplification of the page.

Hopefully sometime in the future I will have a site that looks like this:

Here’s what resulted.

I wanted use an old abandoned house but wasn’t sure how. After some thinking I came up with the idea of creating an obvious contrast between the house and my subjects. I decided to use a fairly nice looking chair along with having my models dress nicely. I feel these details helped add a lot to the image while leaving room for much interpretation about what is really happening in the scene and even when it happened. Is this the actual location of this encounter? Did these people live in this house when it was new? Is this the reason for the house’s abandonment? What happened between these people? Feel free to interpret how you wish and post your thoughts too!

When starting these portraits I decided I wanted to do something within an interest of mine so I decided to go with a theme of weight lifting. I have been doing a lot of lifting in preparation for Track & Field. Being a thrower of shot put, discus, and hammer I need to be strong. This is one of my friends that also does a lot of lifting. I chose to go in the more serious direction and tried to capture a more self reflective emotion or an emotion that says he’s not happy with himself. A lot of the time people perceive weight lifters and cocky and in love with themselves but in reality that can be far off from the truth.

Here are the home and internal pages of my design comp. I downloaded the font I used in order to give it a more digitized feel, combined with the bright green I was hoping to get the feel that you were looking through the high tech helmet of a fighter pilot…or at least the look of a simulator.

Again, photograms a basic photograph. The prints are created by placing objects on top of light sensitive photo paper in the darkroom. Then the paper is exposed to the light multiple times with some rearranging of the objects on the paper in order to create different effects, feels, and tonal range.

Here are two photogram prints I created:

The past few periods we have been learning how to develop the film. I have done all of this in high school but that was fairly unguided because another student and I were the only ones doing dark room work since we had already taken the digital class. Instead of the teacher being with us he was with usually with the class doing work on the computers. I’m pretty excited to be able to do this again. I really enjoy being in the dark room. There’s something about the rudimentary or archaic process of developing one’s own negatives and prints that gives a type of satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment that can’t be received by doing work on the computer.

So as assignments get handed back I’ll be scanning them in and posting them here!