Homeless in America, No. 4: Otis

His name is Otis. He reclines against the base of a shop window, one knee raised and the other leg extending across the pavement. The blue of his jacket and jeans carries the eye through the photograph to his face. He looks directly into the camera. Beside him, a cardboard sign reads, “Anything will do.”

I find those words difficult to pass over. They leave the offer entirely with whoever reads them. A passer-by can decide whether to stop, what to give, and how long to remain. The sign makes its appeal within that unequal arrangement. The person asking has a need; the person being asked has the freedom to continue walking.

A meal or a few dollars can make a considerable difference to the next several hours. I value that help. I am also concerned with what happens when those hours end. Food and shelter remain daily necessities. An immediate act of kindness leaves the larger question of dependable support before us.

The modest scale of a request can make the scale of the deprivation easier to miss. “Anything will do” asks very little of the reader. We should take care with how readily we accept so low a threshold on another person’s behalf.

Otis occupies the photograph with a presence that exceeds the little sign beside him. He should be able to count on a home, regular meals, and some certainty about tomorrow. The measure of an adequate response is what would allow him to live securely.

Homeless in America, No. 5 (anonymous)

The pink trousers and orange shoes catch the eye first. Then there is the curve of the body against the pale, rough wall: knees drawn up, hands close together, eyes closed. A blue bag supports his head. A phone lies on the pavement within reach.

The wall fills much of the photograph. Beneath it, he has arranged himself in the narrow space where a person can lie down. The bag serves as a pillow; the paving supports everything else. Such small accommodations reveal how much the simplest bodily need can require when there is nowhere suitable to attend to it.

I think here about the need to stop. We all reach a point at which continuing becomes difficult and rest takes precedence over whatever else the day requires. Sleep asks us to relinquish our watchfulness. Somewhere secure, we can surrender to that need with a reasonable expectation of being left undisturbed.

On a pavement, that expectation is harder to sustain. Other people retain access to the space around the resting body. Footsteps, conversation, weather, and the movement of an ordinary day continue within its immediate surroundings. Even being still takes place on terms a person has little power to set.

A bed, a protected place, and enough uninterrupted time are among the things housing makes possible. Their absence reaches into the hours when a person has the least capacity to manage it.

I want our concern for homelessness to extend into those hours. A place to sleep in safety belongs among the basic things we owe one another.

Homeless in America, No. 6 (anonymous)

His name is withheld at his request. A dark knitted cap frames his face, with two cigarettes tucked beneath its edge. His eyes turn slightly to one side. There is a faint lift at the corners of his mouth. Behind him, the brickwork supplies a steady pattern against the loose dark fabric around his shoulders.

The closeness of the portrait gives these details room. His cap doubles as a place to keep the cigarettes. The direction of his gaze takes his attention beyond the camera. I am drawn to the sense that something continues outside this exchange, beyond what a viewer has been allowed to see.

A series about homelessness needs room for such a portrait. The expectation of visible suffering can become another restriction placed on people already living with considerable deprivation. An expression of ease, a moment of humour, or an interest in one’s appearance can be seized upon as evidence that the need has been overstated. That expectation makes a person’s face answerable to somebody else’s idea of hardship.

I want the people in these photographs to have the full range of expression that I take for granted in myself. A person may be sociable, reserved, distracted, amused, or simply occupied with something the photographer cannot know. The need for somewhere secure to live persists through all of it.

His decision to keep his name private matters within that relationship. It sets a limit on what he wishes to make available. I respect that limit. Looking closely brings an obligation to accept that some things remain his to decide.

He can turn his attention elsewhere. Our concern for his circumstances should be able to survive the moment when he looks away.

Homeless in America, No. 7 (anonymous)

A purple blanket covers most of his body. His head rests close to a food container; one arm extends onto the stone, the palm turned upward. A blue bag lies partly beneath the blanket. Behind him, the broad sides of a raised planter give the photograph its dominant shape.

There is a great deal of planning visible here. Stone has been cut and fitted. The planting has a defined bed; the paving and drainage have their places. The setting records the work of making a shared space usable and presentable. At its base, a person lies on the ground.

I find that proximity difficult to set aside. We have a developed understanding of what a public place requires: surfaces, planting, drainage, maintenance. Those practical concerns belong in any account of how we live together. So does the person who has spread a blanket beside the planter. His need for somewhere to live deserves organised attention and a response that lasts.

The blanket introduces something familiar from a bedroom into this carefully built setting. Its folds gather around a body supported by paving stones. It offers a covering in a place where so much else that would make rest comfortable and secure is absent.

A photograph can bring these things together so neatly that the arrangement begins to seem complete. I am wary of that satisfaction in my own looking. The strong geometry and the colour of the blanket hold my attention; the circumstances require me to think beyond what works within the frame.

Our care for public space should extend to the people living in it. The person beside the planter needs a home.

photographs and commentary courtesy:

Will Hazlitt, R9 Media Photo Collective

His name is Dylan. He stands beside a loaded bicycle, a backpack on his shoulders and one hand in the pocket of his jeans. The green shopping bag supplies the photograph’s brightest colour. His gaze meets the camera directly, above the cluster of belongings that fills much of the lower frame.

The bicycle makes me think about the work of keeping things with you. Bags hang from the handlebars; dark clothing is bundled behind them. Getting somewhere means finding room for what must come along. Each journey has a weight as well as a destination.

Many of us can leave home carrying only what we choose for the day. The rest waits for us. That is a considerable freedom, although we seldom speak of it as one. It allows an errand to remain an errand, a walk to be taken for pleasure, a few hours away to pass without concern for everything left behind.

Without a secure place to live, a brief stop can involve finding space for bags, keeping them within sight, and considering how far they must travel next. The need to attend to possessions can follow a person through an entire day. It claims time and attention that those of us with housing can spend elsewhere.

Dylan’s face remains the centre of this portrait. The objects around him cannot tell us what he thinks, what he hopes for, or the full extent of his experience. I want to give his circumstances the attention they warrant while respecting how much of his life belongs beyond the photograph.

The ability to manage a day can make the need for help easier to overlook. A bicycle and some bags offer practical ways of getting by. He still needs a home. I cannot regard getting by as an adequate answer to homelessness. Dylan deserves somewhere secure to return to, and the freedom to leave it without having to carry so much with him.

- Will Hazlitt, R9 Media Photo Collective

No Justice, No Peace - 2020

“I took this photograph at the United Against Trump March in June 2020. I remember seeing a child pick up the flag and play with his brother. Then they separated, and the boy with the flag began dancing in the street. The shot presented itself, and I took it. It’s one of my favorite photographs. Yet as much as I love it, I never look at it. That was a very intense time in my life.”

- Dave Boccio, Photographer

Face Photo

“When I look at this photograph, I think about what that flag should promise the child carrying it: a secure home, a decent education, access to healthcare, and equal protection under the law. His future should be open to him regardless of race, family income, or neighborhood.

For me, equality means that everyone has the same claim to those conditions. Equity requires us to address the barriers that make them harder for some people to obtain. That responsibility belongs to our institutions and to those of us who shape their decisions. The demand written across this road calls for changes that people can feel in their daily lives. I want this child to grow up able to trust the society represented by the flag he carries.”

- Will Hazlitt, R9 Media Photo Collective

The slight inclination of the head gives this portrait its character. The man meets the camera directly, yet the tilt loosens the formality of the pose. His brow is gathered, his eyes narrowed beneath it, and the closed mouth holds a suggestion of a smile. These elements coexist without settling into a single expression. The face has an immediate visual force, accompanied by small inflections that become more interesting as we look.

Light makes the face unusually tangible. It catches the closely shaven scalp, picks out the fine creases beside the eyes, and separates individual strands in the pale moustache and beard. Across the cheek, brightness gives way to stubble and softer shadow. The monochrome treatment allows each surface its own register, from the broad illumination of the forehead to the intricate texture around the mouth. There is a satisfying precision to this distribution of light. The eye can travel across the face without losing the sense of its whole.

Behind him, the leaves establish an active field of pointed shapes, overlapping edges, and dark intervals. Foliage fills the openings around the figure, enclosing the pale head in a restless pattern. The leaves remain legible enough for their angular forms to play against the rounded brow and shoulders. This is a particularly effective background: its density holds the figure close, and its scattered highlights continue the activity of the light beyond the face.

The crop lends the photograph an almost conversational distance. The shoulders extend beyond the image, and the plain shirt anchors the lower portion with a broad expanse of grey. Its curved neckline echoes the curve of the skull; a diagonal seam carries the eye inward. These ordinary details preserve the casualness of the portrait. The boundary of light and shade adds a firmer edge to those softer curves. The shadow across the shirt gives the shoulders weight beneath the brightly lit head.

Within the Rugged American series, this photograph gives “rugged” a useful precision. The word can describe the visible grain of the face, the firmness of its contours, and the directness of the gaze. The expression gives that description further dimensions. The brow lends gravity; the faint movement at the mouth introduces an ease that complicates our first impression. I find that complication essential to the picture. Masculinity becomes more interesting here because its outward firmness accommodates a suggestion of amusement.

The close framing makes the smallest inflections consequential. We return to the face, adjusting our reading by degrees. At this distance, the distinction between severity and warmth can rest on a very slight curve.

- Élodie Vasseur

R9 Media Photo Collective

His name is Philip. He sits close to the camera in a fluorescent yellow shirt with broad reflective strips. A bag strap crosses his chest. Cars and commercial buildings fill the background. He looks directly at the lens.

The shirt is designed to make its wearer visible. I keep returning to that practical detail. A man can be conspicuous and still find his most basic needs excluded from public concern. Philip is here, plainly in view, while the lack of a home can be absorbed into the surrounding scene as though it were another ordinary feature of American life.

A secure home gives a person somewhere to close a door, put down possessions, wash, and rest. It also gives us room to be tired or ill, to want company or refuse it, to have hours that belong to us. We rarely count these freedoms when we speak about housing. Yet deprivation of that private space reaches into every part of a life. The world becomes an audience to needs the rest of us can attend to behind a door.

Philip’s claim to that security exists before any explanation of how he came to be without it. When we make shelter conditional on a history we find sufficiently sympathetic, we turn necessity into a test of character. The person in need must account for himself; those of us passing judgment feel no comparable obligation to explain our indifference. I find that arrangement indecent. It allows us to talk endlessly about responsibility while reserving the hardest questions for the man left exposed.

Putting Philip’s portrait before other people creates an obligation for me, too. The attention this photograph receives should lead back to his need for somewhere to live. Admiration for an image can become another convenient stopping point, another way of responding warmly while leaving his circumstances undisturbed.

Philip needs a home. A society that leaves him without one has an obligation to account for its choices. He is here, looking directly at us. We are the ones who owe an answer.

Will Hazlitt, R9 Media Photo Collective

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We talked about their most epic activism adventures, what it feels like to be punished by the legal system for your commitment to the animal cause, the many countries that have banned our guests and much much more.

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