Unlike major cities in the USA, the city of London made a
concerted effort to assist its homeless population during the early stages of
the Covid-19 pandemic. For folks who were sleeping on the streets, the city
government rented hotel rooms and provided food for the lockdown. “Everyone In”
brought in 6 times the usual number of homeless and some of these folks were
moved to permanent housing. In New York City, the state government did little
to nothing for the homeless and passed a law to keep them from riding the
subway all night. Chicago did nothing and the homeless flooded the subway
system after midnight, providing an unsafe environment for themselves and the
hapless travelers going to one of America’s busiest airports for redeye flights.
Thus, it is estimated that a homeless person during the pandemic in the USA was
two to three times more likely to die of Covid-19 than people in the general
population.
Although Great Britain showed much more concern and
compassion than the USA, Bryan Adams and Atlas Gallery of London still seemed
to feel it was a good time to remind folks of the problems facing the homeless
during these harsh times and to ask whether enough is being done. Indeed, there
was a significant surge in the numbers of rough sleepers in the last part of
2020 and first part of 2021, about half of them on the streets for the first
time. It is feared that once Covid-19 is finally eliminated, support mechanisms
will be removed and homelessness will become even worse in the city. What
is
to be done for the homeless after the pandemic? Will they simply go back to sleeping
in the streets? During this period of time when compassion has been cultivated
to save the lives of our most marginalized and vulnerable, will we just go back
to an unacceptable normality with the homeless? Did we just experience a
temporary compassion to fit the needs of the pandemic and soon we will be back
to what was?
Adams’ photos are stark and uncompromising as the subjects
often face the camera naked (to ostensibly divorce them from the visual
trappings of their social status, location and time period). Engaging the
photos becomes a combination, therefore, of pre-established information and raw
image. So we come to each photo knowing that we will see a homeless person and
this necessarily alters how we engage the image even without visual trappings.
Perhaps this is the perfect process to push us to examine the prejudices or
preconceived ideas that we bring to these folks. The photos might confirm what
we already feel or disabuse us of misconceptions. But we have to ask: What
do
these photos do to us in relation to what we already know, believe or feel?
So Adams is not proselytizing or arguing so much as he is
asking us to become aware of our own emotional responses and how they are
triggered. He might be asking what is necessary to change our pre-established
conceptions. Can such a raw image do it, or does the image become corrupted
based on what we believe? What kind of cognitive baggage do we carry around
with us ready to impute on others who have not been as fortunate as us? How
does the information we possess affect what these photos can do to us? Can we begin
to see in these images what puts people off about the homeless? Can we
recognize what alienates us from these folks who stand unassumingly in front of
us? What stops us from real moral and social action concerning this group of “outsiders”?
How much emotion should we feel staring at these images – is it emotion they
solicit? Are these photos soliciting anything from us? What makes us feel or
stops us from feeling a sense of responsibility while looking at these photos?
Indeed, these are photos of homeless folks who have taken
action to improve their circumstances by selling copies of
The Big Issue.
The Big Issue is a periodical that can be sold by the homeless to earn
income. The seller pays a small amount for each issue, but sells the issue at
twice that fee. Thus, this is a venture completely centered in a business
operation and not a process of begging. This enterprise was begun in 1991 and
spawned successful copycats around the world. A little bio is available
concerning each of the sellers depicted and the bios mirror the prevalent
causes of homelessness. There are, in fact, three big reasons for homelessness
– drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness and just plain bad financial luck.
Sometimes there are combinations of these three factors or one factor leads to
another factor which becomes a negative feedback loop. So the information we
bring to each photo also can have an optimistic element as we know these are
folks who have suffered, could have given up, but are taking action. This is,
perhaps, why we see smiles or glimpses of smiles on some of the subjects.
To me this show is all about the information we get and
bring to the visual image, the limits of the image itself, how we feel
compelled to supplement images instead of absorbing them and whether a lot of
this is trustworthy. We can either do a conscientious job by learning as much
as we can about those in need and avoiding petty cynicism, or we can do an
irresponsible job by clinging to misconceptions and buying into hate. The show
seems to be about the need to continually search for the truth about those who
have been harmed and neglected by our society. The photos demonstrate that
folks in dire need exist and if we truly care about them beyond the pandemic,
we will learn what it takes to fully tackle homelessness as the long-persisting
social evil it has been and always will be.
