Meat

I resisted taking this photograph. And then I circled back to capture what I saw.

When I first passed this scene, my position relative to the subject and the supporting environment, told a more compelling story. The relationship between the homeless man and the billboard contained a stronger relationship. But circling back I got what I got and moved on.

I moved on though the ghost image of what I had initially seen still lingered in my subconscious. I followed that unwritten rule where we who wander the streets looking for stories refrain from taking advantage of subjects who can’t help their exposed fragile situations. At first I did the right thing even if I burned inside to go back and snap a photo

We are all guilty of this, right? Taking photos of what we consider, the human condition. Especially as we begin the journey of photography. We are attracted to our opposites. We see inherent a compelling moment that may explain something to us.  Why do THEY have less than US? What happened? How close are WE to who THEY are? There are some photographers that insist as long as you make an effort to confront these unfortunates, to hear their story, then snapping pictures of their destitution is fine. Yet even they charge the scene with more by stripping the image of color for added effect of drama.

This is all fine. But I am not that guy. I call my web site The Unobtrusive Eye for a reason. I don’t want to be seen. I want to be air. To be honest, I am not looking to tell someone else’s story. I am making an image to fit my memory. My goal is to please myself with whatever artistic skill I have. I take and process the image to calm my own demons or glorify my unique eye.

In the last years I’ve matured somewhat. I don’t want to take pictures of the misfortunes of others. This is why I passed this guy by. But then I didn’t walk away. I turned back. I felt the whir on my skin, the buzz in my ear. I felt the news of the day and the weeks and the months pressing on my neck and there it was in color for me to capture how I thought. How I thought— How is it possible a man is lying on a street as if he has no worth? We are God’s most extraordinary organic machines, yet at the end of the day we are just meat.

I see so clear we are just connecting tissue no different than a cuttle fish or raccoon, or little seen deep lake dwellers axoloti, or high prairie inhabiters pronghorns; same basic blood to heart, same instinctual need for procreation, pleasure of sustenances, knowledge of feeling safe or knowing fear.

Same, but we are not, we these God-engine extraordinary machines. Of all the animals in the world, mankind is hell-bent to destroy each other. Yet our cognitive capabilities are robust compared to all other sentient creatures. (Though maybe not as smart as trees, who know that the best way to survive is dig deep and plentiful the roots.)

That picture I almost didn’t take said all this to me in that nanosecond where I changed course and went back. Like a thief I took this photo. Not my usual unobtrusive-skill. Taking photographs like the Invisible Man, my subjects sometimes looking right at me and having no clue I captured them for the love of art: I took this photograph as if my invisibility lay in a puddle underneath my feet. Rat-a-tat-tat, two shots, afraid my presence was felt, then quickly left the scene.

In the day I’ve been thinking over how to write the words to accompany this photograph, I received an email notice of a new blog from David Duchemin, a photographer I met some thirteen years ago. I eagerly read his book, Within The Frame. Later that year I was lucky enough to sign up for a photography workshop he held in Nepal. I identified with his style: Not seascapes and the creatures underneath, or African vistas of giraffes osmosing with sunsets, but authenticity in ethnicity; peoples and cultures in parts of the world where life was lived on the streets. These were the pictures I wanted to take!

I mention him now because the years have changed his focus. Now he deep sea dives (I never will) and chases bears and lions (more probable for me) to capture images. I remember his technique back in the day where it was more important to get the story-image in camera and then just tweak it in Lightroom to re-enforce the vision. Now he is more loose, more willing to draw out the drama. His blog post last week was in answer to an online critic who judged his latest cinematic image of elephants as “uncomfortable” to them because of his use of more digital drama.

David was a bit put out by the comment left on his social media account. His background is comedy standup, but his written response was a bit restrained. Yet I could see his inner snark rapid replying, “Jesus, Ignoramus with a capital ‘I’, all I did was recolor the grass a bit more to yellow from green and add the ‘cool-is-in’ pastel blue in the sky. Too bad I don’t have an image of you to AI-put-under-the-feet-of-Dumbo, you dumb-o.”

I turned around the other day and brought out my iPhone like a scimitar; I swiped for blood. Because these past months I feel bloodied. I knew full well the two snaps I stealthed were not relationship-strong as I hoped.

David Duchemin would ‘Meh’ this photo if I had presented it as my nightly image presented for critique in the photography workshop in Nepal. He would ‘get it’ but he would see the frame could have been stronger if I worked the scene a bit more, moved about; instead the iPhone as scimitar, a blade capable of light-capture. Quintessence just a positon-myself-a-few-feet-in-a- different-direction away.

Or now, because he is driven more to the idea that there are no rules, could I have added words to this image and make its effect searing?

What I would have said? That this week I feel the weight of the world. The hate of the world. The guy on the street is one of many people on the street. The street people in Colombia absolutely desperate. Absolutely have nothing. They wake from their stumble-to-the-ground still exhausted from the day before and rummage again for hours in trash cans for a chicken bone that still has a sliver of skin or a water bottle with some drops left. And yes, if they see an opportunity unfold where they can be a thief and take, they take. Yet it is the same at the end of the day; they stumble onto some street and lay out to sleep. To wait for the next day where the hunger pang is less intense for a moment they can stand and begin the cycle again.

We humans. Extraordinary God-driven creatures whose minds hold within Einsteins and Rembrandts and Gandhis— how can this be? This thought drove me to turn around, struck by how this guy lay prone before a coffin he didn’t even see that mimicked how he is seen and his belongings, whatever they were—foraged or stolen—also on display on that billboard.

Years ago I stopped taking photographs of the unfortunates. Because they scare me; how close I am to them, how close most of us are who live paycheck to paycheck. How our other self will pass them by where they lay, quick to judge, yet how many, count with me, are the Einsteins and the Gandhis we go to the other side of the street to avoid?

Fish swim in schools; are they always learning? And elephants and lions and the minuscule ant and the bees; they do not shun their kind, they form a close surround as befits the cognizance they possess. We extraordinary creatures every day in history are out for blood; even Da Vinci fashioned machines built for war.

In David Duchemin’s past, he was once a pastor, a man who saw quintessence. Then of course he became a comedian because there is nothing funnier than mankind. That led him to chasing half-dressed ethnic peoples, because he saw how close they were to the earth.

Later in life God decided David owed him a foot, so David did what we extraordinary creatures do, he dived into the oceans so he could float with the whales and the sharks and swim between the lecture studies of smaller fish. That world where harmony exists. Where his disability is an ability.

Until he rises as he must to breathe, we all of us on the streets. Over time he has learned to adapt to what the brilliant minds of humanity has given him, a prosthetic. Yet, being human, he has these two things. The ability to take what he sees and paint it with what he feels. And also feel a bit hurt when someone in the protective ether of social media can leave a comment for a night that bothers his newly gained two-foot stance.

I ‘get it.’ Because I felt like a thief to get this photograph. Like someone who stumbled after her thought he learned to stand. Yet how can I turn away from so much meat?