Tag: Homeless

Categories
Street Photography

Wine Pairing Suggestions For The End Of The World

Night photograph of a homeless person sleeping underneath an orange blanket on the sidewalk at the intersection of Queen and Bay in Toronto.
Reclined on sidewalk, NE corner Queen and Bay

As a matter of habit, Peter Hadley III turned on his TV. He was now more than 90 days into it and yet another day with no TV signal, no internet connection, no cellphone service. He’d even tried old media like radio, shortwave, and CB, but all he heard at any frequency was a fitzing sound like when he pressed his ear to the mouth of a freshly opened bottle of Champagne. He wouldn’t even have electrical power if it weren’t for the building’s backup generator and a stack of jerrycans filled with diesel fuel. At least he could keep his wine collection chilled at the proper temperature.

Every day, Peter wandered the city streets, finding no one, not even human remains, and only now was he beginning to reconcile himself to the possibility that he was the sole survivor of whatever mysterious holocaust had taken everyone else. But on the 91st day, he discovered Cliff sprawled by the entrance to the city’s largest grocery store and eating potato chips and gulping diet cola from a two litre plastic bottle. Peter introduced himself and asked how long Cliff had been on his own.

Cliff answered that it’d been maybe two or three years.

Peter said that was impossible since things had gone haywire only 91 days earlier.

Still, Cliff said, I been living rough maybe two or three years. The rest of the world vanishing don’t really change that none. Tent in the ravine, just like always. Come up in the morning, just like always. Only, instead of begging for change, I bust into grocery stores and eat Twinkies.

Peter suppressed the customary feeling of revulsion that seized him whenever he encountered a homeless man. He observed that Cliff’s clothes were ragged and dirty. The man smelled. His fingertips were black with grime. Even so, Peter had grown tired of eating alone and craved the company of a live body, even if it was the live body of a homeless man. Besides, as Peter Hadley II had once said: You cannot drink a fine wine in solitude; it tastes so much better when you share it in the company of men. Given that, in the current situation, it appeared the only people left alive in the world were men, Peter was inclined to overlook the sexist undertones of his late father’s dictum.

Peter asked if Cliff wanted to join him for a proper dinner back at his apartment. Cliff could get himself washed up and put on some clean clothes. Peter had caught some fresh trout off a pier on the lakeshore and they could fry it up and, in lieu of lemons, they could accompany it with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough.

Cliff didn’t care one way or the other about a snooty wine-paired dinner, but he did like the idea of simple human contact. He followed Peter to his penthouse condo and when he walked through the front door said holy god almighty. Peter had been the CFO of a Fortune 500 company before he retired at 40 with his stock options and his Bentley. It was easy for a man in Peter’s position to forget that most people aren’t accustomed to sprawling accommodations with views that go forever.

While Cliff whacked off in one of the guest room showers and picked at a corn on his foot and trimmed his fingernails, Peter prepared dinner in a kitchen whose hardware rivaled that of any Michelin rated restaurant. Cliff gulped his Sauvignon Blanc in precisely the same way he had gulped his diet Cola and, as before, finished with a belch. He took no time on the nose, didn’t pause on the front end, ignored the mid-palate. And as for a finish, the wine had disappeared before there was any hope of that. Then again, it wasn’t as if he’d wasted a Lafite Rothschild on the man.

Peter Hadley III kept a wine room weighted heavily in favour of left bank Bordeaux wines along with a selection of Grand Cru Burgundies. One of the challenges in the current situation was finding appropriate pairings for his wines. While he found it easy enough to catch fresh fish and had even slaughtered a couple chickens while wandering through Little Portugal, locating red meat was a greater challenge. When the power went out, butchered meat began to rot. Peter had grabbed whatever cuts he could find and had stored them in his personal freezer, but that was no long term solution. There were still cows grazing in fields north of the city, but Peter had no idea how to slaughter a cow, much less carve it into pieces suitable for laying out grilled on his fine china. He wondered if maybe a pig would be easier. Burgundy would pair well enough with pork. He lived in Hogtown. Surely there must be pigs nearby.

Peter savoured the grassy notes as he took a modest sip of the Sauvignon Blanc. He gazed across the table at his guest, and beyond to the open kitchen door where he saw a wide selection of knives stuck to the magnetic strip across the far wall. With a roofie in Cliff’s glass, the man would be easy to handle, certainly easier than a fat sow. Peter could drag him unconscious into the guest shower and drain him there. What makes a good pairing with human flesh? he wondered. He had a twenty year old Romanée-Conti he would love to try with a well seasoned flank.

Categories
Street Photography

Photographs of what was but is no more

Shirtless man covered in chalk sits on bench with a balloon that says: Happy Birthday!
Man sitting outside the Bloor/Yonge subway station, Toronto.

As is my habit, I start each month with a fresh theme. For the month of May, I will feature images that represent things / people / buildings / neighbourhoods / objects / ideas that were but are no more. All photography seeks to freeze time. All photography fails in this because time carries on; we gaze at the frozen photograph and can’t help but note how much things have changed. Far from freezing time, our photographs underscore how quickly it flows.

Nothing alerts me to this flow quite like a visit to the local archives. For me, that means the City of Toronto archives, but most cities have an archival service. What shocks me is the speed at which my own photographs become “archival.” The word “archival” calls to mind old black and white prints of people wearing dated fashions and crossing streets where the only mode of transportation is horse-drawn carriages. But my own photographs are quickly becoming archival because the world they portray is vanishing, and at an accelerated pace.

Part of it may have to do with a cultural shift. Once upon a time, we were outraged to learn that General Motors had adopted a principle of planned obsolescence as a way to guarantee a future market for its products. But we’ve grown complacent, allowing the practice to drive consumer demand for everything from new clothes to new phones to new intimate partners. This cultural shift has even crept into municipal planning so that now we treat large buildings, even entire city blocks, as if they were disposable. As a result, it takes only a few short years for our urban geography to become unrecognizable.

I pass a homeless man I’ve seen at different corners throughout the downtown core. Shirtless. Body covered in a chalky white powder. A helium-filled foil balloon says Happy Birthday and reminds me that another year has passed me by. At the man’s bare feet are a dozen or so shopping bags—the universal symbol of consumerism—stuffed with all his belongings. In the background I see scaffolding at a construction site. Today, this is the site of a 76 story condominium residence. I can’t remember what stood there before the demolition.

Most troubling of all is the fact that, today, 7 years after making this image, I no longer see this man anymore. Even people are disposable. Some more than others.

Categories
City Life

A Different Kind of Homeless

Walking south on Bay Street in December, Toronto

A lot of street photography that documents people living on the street is little more than homeless porn, a salacious leering that doesn’t even pass as curiosity. I’m sometimes guilty of this myself as I try to find my way through the ethical quagmires of street photography. A question that often passes through my mind as I’m framing a shot: exploitation? or social commentary? Typically, the answer that returns to me is: a little of both. It’s nigh impossible to do the latter without the former.

Since none of us can ever achieve ethical purity—at least not without allowing our work to devolve into a Disneyfied kitsch—the next question we have to ask ourselves is whether people might nevertheless need to see the images we make. We acknowledge that our hands are dirty. We steel ourselves against the slathering absolutists that run in packs on social media. And we share our images.

It’s early evening in December of 2019. People carry on with their holiday office parties. There are vague reports of a mysterious new virus. But the outbreaks are on the other side of the globe. It has nothing to do with us. I’m walking up Bay Street toward King, the heart of Toronto’s financial district. A young suit is walking my way, probably on his way to Union Station after an office party. Despite the snow piled around the utility pole, he’s feeling warm. Maybe he’s had a couple of cocktails. He’s ditched the tie, an open neck in freezing weather. The young can get away with that sort of thing.

The suit passes a homeless person in a sleeping bag laid across a warm steam vent. The suit doesn’t appear to notice the sleeping bag. He sidesteps it the same way he’d sidestep a lump of dog shit, all while keeping his gaze straight ahead. He’s pulling a smart phone from his pocket, maybe to text his buddies, meet up for another drink.

This is what I call a high contrast photo. It’s not high contrast in the technical sense, the juxtaposition of strong shadows and bright lights. It’s high contrast in the social sense, and that contrast will only grow more pronounced as the distant virus settles in closer to home. The suit will be fine. He’ll work from home for a few months, recoup his losses one way or another. As for the person sleeping on the vent, all our talk of resilience in the face of adversity won’t much help, will it?

Categories
Street Photography

Provocation #3: Candid Photographs of Homeless People

Homeless woman sleeps on sidewalk across from Dundas Square, Toronto

One of the insoluble debates that regularly tears through the street photography community relates to the ethics of photographing vulnerable people like those living on the streets. The challenge here is that both sides of the debate are right. On one side are those who say that these photographs are an affront to the dignity of the subjects. On the other side are those who say we need to photograph suffering in order to hold accountable those responsible for producing the social inequality that generates this suffering.

Without resolving anything, I offer a couple more considerations:

First, there is a danger that the entire conversation will assume a patronizing tone insofar as both sides of the debate sit over and above the situation and talk from a “we know what’s best for these people” point of view.

Second, it is tempting for photographers to aestheticize the scenes they encounter. Instinctively, they worry about things like composition, catching the scene in a sweet light, making sure the scene is properly exposed. There is a risk that this temptation will result in homeless kitsch or homeless porn or, god forbid, the Trisha Romance homeless print available for $14.95 on Etsy.

Personally, I don’t feel equipped to address let alone resolve this debate. The best I can do is consider matters on a case by case basis. I think it would be an especially craven thing to sell decorative homeless prints. At the same time, documentation is important. I think it’s incumbent upon me to challenge the self-congratulatory talk that local politicians spread like so much manure whenever some ridiculous survey-for-hire announces that we live in one of the world’s most livable cities. I point to the evidence I trip over every day and ask: but what about this person? and this person? How can we say this is livable if it isn’t livable for everyone?

Categories
City Life

Winter Scenes: The Precariously Housed in Toronto

Winter tent on Bloor Street, Toronto

Winter is always a difficult time for people whose housing arrangements are insecure at best. Whenever the temperature goes below -10ºC, the city of Toronto issues a cold weather alert for the benefit of those who ordinarily live rough. This triggers the opening up of additional temporary shelter space. Nevertheless, for a variety of reasons, there are always some recalcitrant souls who won’t place themselves in the shelter system. For some, there are mental health issues. For others, there is the fear of violence. And Covid-19 has added another dimension to the sense of bodily threat.

During a snow storm, I shot this tent on the stretch of Bloor Street West known as the Mink Mile, one of the most expensive shopping districts in the world. You can see the Cartier sign in the background. Nearby are flagship stores for Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Dior, Burberry, and Hermès. With talk of rentals at $300 a square foot generating sales of $2000 a square foot, the disparity of wealth this suggests is stunning, and yet those of us who live here grow inured to it.

The other day, I made the mistake of tumbling down the rabbit hole of a Twitter thread where somebody suggested this was nothing we should be concerned about; it’s for the homeless to take responsibility for themselves; let them get proper jobs. Maybe I was being trolled. Maybe the person posting this wanted own the libs. There’s a lot of that going around these days. Even so, I suspect the people who post these things are far less ironic in their views than they’d have us believe. They don’t want only to provoke a reaction; they really mean what they say.

In the past, I might have responded with some variation of a chat about the fact that the proportion of those living on our city streets while struggling with a major mental health issue is north of 70 percent. I’d go on from there to describe some of the more concrete ways in which mental illness hamstrings a person and makes talk of getting a job utterly beside the point.

But I don’t engage in those kinds of chats anymore. Life’s too short to waste talking to people who have already foreclosed the possibility of compassionate regard for those around them. I don’t care if people want to troll me or own me or stomp on me and thump their chests like silver backed mountain gorillas. This conversation isn’t about me, so owning me accomplishes nothing.

Homelessness and its attendant demons, mental illness and an outrageous housing market, are matters of social responsibility. You either commit to that view or you don’t. But if you don’t, your world view takes you ineluctably to the assertion that people who suffer aren’t human. This is the view shared by the person who refuses to participate in the well-established protocols that keep people safe during a pandemic because they lack the imagination to see how their rights are safeguarded by everyone else’s commitment to social responsibility.

The intractability of such a view, the refusal of give and take, the impossibility of reason, is not simply immature, it veers into cultism which, ironically, is a mental health condition.

Thus endeth my rant.

Categories
Street Portrait

Street Portrait: Eyrish

Shot by the entrance to the LCBO on Yonge St south of Wellesley

I spoke with Eyrish on a cold January evening outside the LCBO at Yonge & Wellesley. I don’t think Eyrish is his legal name, more a nom de guerre. When I think of it, there’s no reason each of us shouldn’t have 20 different names, each name for a different mood. When I’m feeling depressed, you can call me Clem; and when I’m feeling anxious, you can call me Walter. In any event, the man shown here was feeling cold and maybe a bit manic and he asked me to call him Eyrish.

For some of the shots, he posed with an empty beer can, but I don’t like those shots as they play to a homeless trope that doesn’t serve anyone, least of all Eyrish who didn’t appear to be drunk, empty beer can notwithstanding. I prefer a simpler shot. He looks up and to the right from his seat on the ground. He’s wearing a hoodie under a leather jacket, and a toque to keep his head warm. I kneel across the sidewalk from him and catch him in a pause from his frenetic banter.

Categories
Street Photography

Great Advice Pays Off

Sleeping on a warm vent at King & Bay, Toronto

Capturing a moment of cognitive dissonance is like shooting fish in a barrel. A lot of times, I barely notice how one element of a photograph is at odds with another element. In this instance, I noticed a man lying on a vent in the heart of Toronto’s financial district and thought I should capture the moment as part of an ongoing effort to document the obvious rise of homelessness during the pandemic. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed the sign overhead: Great advice pays off. There is an obvious incongruity between the tagline of a financial institution and a man with no more security than the coat over his head.

We used to call this sort of thing cognitive dissonance, but I don’t think the world has much use for that term anymore. The idea of cognitive dissonance used to be that we could throw competing values into the same space to produced a radical clash. This was a strategy that critics could deploy to expose a lie. Now, there are a lot of disillusioned critics wringing their hands and wondering why bother when we live in a post-truth world. Never has this been so evident than in the age of Trumpism which has ushered in a celebration of alternative facts, narratives unhinged from referents in the real world, and a willingness to stare lies squarely in the face and adopt them as truths.

Trump didn’t invent any of this, of course. He merely honed it into an art. Before him, there was Bernie Madoff who sold Ponzi schemes as legitimate financial practices, and George W. Bush who continued to rationalize a war with a lie even after the lie had been exposed, and before Bush there was Thatcher who insisted that the deregulation of financial markets would make life better for working class men and women even as misery spread all around her.

We don’t even wink anymore. We don’t even worry that a revelation will ruin our career. We’ve grown so inured to the lies that we face them straight on and continue on our way, as I did when I saw this lie and set up the shot without even thinking about it.

Categories
Street Portrait

Homeless Woman Walking on Bloor Street

Homeless woman walks in the middle of the road at the Bloor/Yonge Intersection, Toronto.

I had crouched just west of the Bloor/Yonge intersection in Toronto, shooting cyclists as they whizzed past, when this homeless woman wandered into the frame. She’s a familiar face and I know that she makes little distinction between a sidewalk and the middle of a road, yet somehow she doesn’t get mowed down by speeding cars. If you look closely, you’ll see that she’s carrying a cup of coffee in each of her jacket pockets. She is wearing fresh clothes and has a new “do”. Some of the local women’s shelters, like Lazarus House, give their clients new outfits and offer help with personal grooming. I saw this woman repeatedly in the days after I shot this photo and she continued wear the same clothes while her hair grew increasingly unkempt. Two weeks later, she had ditched these clothes and was wandering down the middle of the street in a hoodie.