Tent City Homeless Community

rexbobcat

I recently did a short photo essay about the tent city here in town for a college photo class and a university publication.

Unfortunately most of the residents weren't keen on the whole photo thing so I only got a few shots of people. But I think that in the short span of photos that I used it was effective.


This is Cliff. He's not technically homeless - he's one of the managers of the tent city.



And here is Joe, who is homeless and is trying to find employment as quickly as possible.

BrettDeutsch

They're nice portraits. I think you've captured both of your subjects excellently (technically and emotionally). My only technical critique is that I wish there wasn't reflections in the glasses blocking your first subject's eyes. As for storytelling, I think that's were the photos don't quite work. There's nothing that yells "homeless" about these photos. And perhaps that's what you're trying to say -- these are just regular people. But if that's the case, you'll probably ultimately need more subjects to really get that point across.

rexbobcat

I'm kind of frustrated with the glasses thing too. They are soooo thick that everything reflects in them unless under shade somewhere, and I didn't want to bring out lighting since...they didn't exactly want me there in the first place. Ha.

Yeah I was trying to steet away from the "aww look at those poor people" thing. I'm burnt out on those sympathetic types of photos. And another issue was how the people who live out there don't really scream homeless because even though they are...they're kind of not... They just look like interesting, a bit dirty, people who live in tents.

This is more of an objective view of the tent city, not necessarily the homelessness itself.

That's why I don't have more people. I didn't want the story to be necessarily about the people. That really deserves its own little dialogue not muddled up with a lot of contextual shots.