Establishing MUTUAL TRUST

Not only did I have to earn their trust, they had to earn mine!

I am working alone as I shoot and going inside these wooden boxes is sort of a requirement so I had to get over my fear and decide that I can trust some people.

My first day shooting alone was sort of scary.  I really wanted to move this series along which means I needed to convince people to let me in their homes. But once inside the best shots will be a mixture of artificial and natural light from the door so I need to be standing deep inside the room and they needed to be close to a door or window.

Ok, lets think about this. I am a girl alone with thousands of dollars of camera equipment and I am asking people (mostly men) to go inside their shanty and have them block the entrance?  Yes!  Indeed this sounds insane! But if I want to do this project then this is how it has to be done.

Title: Jerome's Porn Http://www.marylou.us/chaos

So here I am alone in a camp with a lot of people around. Some people like me and some do not. Some I have already photographed. I need to meet someone new and see if I can get them to let me take a portrait inside their home.

Before long I met a big dark skinned black guy named Jerome.  He was from Jamaica with a bit of an accent. Says he is in college and lives in the camp. Wow was he ever big. He was 6’3” at least and weighed about 240 pounds. He said he wanted to show me something inside his house. I wasn’t sure if I should be thrilled that I found someone to photograph or freaked out that this guy could hurt me.

I guess I was more fearful than I would admit because I didn’t want to go past his front door. If I were to get in a battle with this guy I would not win. He says “ You can’t see it from there. Come in and sit on my bed.” I was getting scared. This was so dumb. I should not go in. This guy could totally hurt me. Jerome started to pick up on my apprehension and says “Are you scared?  I won’t hurt you.  I promise. Please.” Great that comment just made my fears worse.

I was scared because people in my personal life were telling me to be scared and to stop this project but my gut said that I needed to do this documentary and whimping out was not an option. Besides, I was the one who decided the best shots were from the inside. I needed to have faith that I was there that day for a reason.   I went in and set on the bed.

When I looked up at what he wanted me to see so badly I started to laugh uncontrollably. Jerome said “ See I told you had nothing to worry about with me.” God was he ever right about that. What he wanted me to see was his collage of naked men with all their male glory. Yes indeed it was  male Porn. No,  Jerome was not interested in me at all!

So much for the great light from the doorway. There was not enough light inside to make a photograph of the porn without a flash. Early on in those days I was just working with an off camera strobe. Now I have battery operated studio strobes.

Not only did I feel relaxed enough to photograph Jerome but he brought me into his world of men dealing with their sexuality.  The island had a subculture of transvestites, transexuals and male protitutes. This is a world that lived outside the vision of my catholic upbringing in the foothills of Appalachia.

Please check out my website for this project at http://www.marylou.us/chaos .  I also have a facebook presence at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Photographer-MaryLou-Uttermohlen/201723200603?ref=hl . This part of the project was made possible by an individual artist fellowhip of $5,000 from the State of Florida.

Defining the criteria

 My desire is to show homeless people that build shelters to live in.  I can’t assume that people would be willing to let me in their houses or that they would be willing to be photographed at all.   But if I ask enough people the same question eventually someone will say yes.   Once I earn one person’s trust it gets easier to convince others. Eventually I did get inside the homes but there was not always a photo there to be created. Getting access is not enough. I need to be able to create a great image from whatever I find. 


Picture yourself being in a plywood box. The room is so small that it is hard to show it all with a wide angle lens.  If the subject is too close to the camera then a portrait will look like a headshot in front of plywood. What does that tell the viewer about this story? Not much. 


As soon as I started looking through my lens to compose photos it would become clear that it is hard to tell I was in a shantytown.  How best do I visually explain that these people are in a personal crisis and not just weekend adventurers or somebody hanging around a shed? 


It is clear I had to create portraits and not reportage. That was a given since I needed to exclude the people who did not want to be photographed.  I can show some action shots but the body of work must primarily be people in their personal space with their things.  What do they own that they are proud of? What do they own that makes them feel better when they see it. Each home had some sort of prized possession. 


On  the very first day I started this project I toured a home in Bicentennial Park with my boyfriend. When we left the home my boyfriend turned to the homeowner and said “ I noticed a personal photo on you wall. Is that your daughter?”


 “No” the man replied “I found her photo on the ground and I liked it so I kept it. I like to look at her and think of my own family.” The man spoke with a Spanish accent. I don’t know where he came from but it might be a good guess that he was an illegal immigrant that left his family behind to come here and make a better life. 


No doubt, the images I create had to include the person’s environment to support their story. Once in a while a portrait could be a tight crop but if done too frequently the information that can be gathered by the location would be lost.

If I crop too much out the viewer doesn’t understand what is going on.  The images had to alert the viewer that the photo had something to do with homelessness or I was unable to communicate about the topic. Given that the people in the photographs are clean and well dressed I still have to find ways for the audience to make the association that the subject matter is about homeless. 


My criteria is that the people could not just be homeless but had to have a shelter they created to enhance their safety and security. I had to be sure to watch what was unfolding for me and not look for a checklist to shoot. It is not my mission to project what I will discover but to wait for what opportunity and or person flows into my path.

Please check out my website for this project at http://www.marylou.us/chaos .  I also have a facebook presence at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Photographer-MaryLou-Uttermohlen/201723200603?ref=hl . This part of the project was made possible by an individual artist fellowhip of $5,000 from the State of Florida.

 

Understanding who they are

We do a lot of projecting of our beliefs on people in this world to form judgments. Many times our beliefs are not based on real facts but on emotional reactions to our own projections.

As soon as the word “homeless” is used a visual image is conjured based on each individuals life experience. For example, a common projection is that a homeless person is a dirty bearded man in tattered soiled clothes holding a bottle covered by a brown paper bag. The man will be sleeping in a public space being ignored as people walk by. How sad indeed.

But the reality of people technically homeless covers a spectrum of faces and they will not all fit into the mold of what society wants to project. To be specific, the real face of homelessness in this country includes children who still attend school and common folks who are just down on their luck. 

Even if we separate the chronically homeless from those who are homeless due to economic hardship you would still be shocked by what you discover. Many of the people I photographed bathed once or twice a day.  Encampment residents owned wardrobes and washed laundry regularly. People cleaned and decorated their living spaces. They washed their sheets and made their beds. One camp in particular had a service van pick residents up for temp jobs and these workers had bank accounts.

If you look at the photographs in this series out of context you would most likely not identify anyone as being homeless based on common projections. To put it simply, our stereotypes of what we think we know about homelessness may not actually align with reality.

My personal conclusion from this experience is that people are the same at all segments of society.  Some of them you will love and some of them you may not care much for and the quality of an individual is not linked to what they own.

No Compensation

There always needs to be a balance between what you take and what you give but how can that be applied to this situation? Sure homeless people would love to be paid for participating in this project.  I would love to have been paid too. 

Many times I have been told  by people that they will act anyway I would like for the right price. Then they would show off a sad face thinking that drama would make a good photo about homelessness. That is not what I am going for at all. 

The goal of the project is to capture an honest depiction of a person’s life experience. When money enters the scene the purpose of their participation shifts.  They are no longer visiting with me because they trust me.  All the sudden my visit becomes a job with expectations. Since I never paid anyone, money was never an issue to manipulate people. Participation  in this project has always been voluntary.

This project has been self-financed with the exception of the $5000 individual artist fellowship from the state of Florida in 1998.  Photography is a expensive media.  I  never had the extra cash to pay people so paying participants has never been a  consideration.  I have always been upfront about that.

I explained to people what I am trying to do and asked for permission to hang out with them. If they agreed, I stayed. If they disagreed, I moved on. Eventually some people that didn’t trust me at first would latter welcome me and become a friend. Somehow I earn people's trust and respect and at that point they would become co-creators of this document.

Defining who I AM

I started this project with a curiosity of wanting to see the inside of shanties and meet the residents of these villages. What are the lives of these people like? What leads them to this destination?  My purpose for creating this work was that I couldn’t drive by it everyday and not have my questions answered. I needed to know their story.

This first thing I learned from taking on this project was to detach emotionally from the people I was documenting. I figured this out by doing the opposite first. 

On my early camp visits I left  feeling sad. I wanted to help these people.  Perhaps I can find them jobs, bring food or collect clothing.   I was overwhelmed by a sense of “there by the grace of God go I.”  What if I were going through this experience? I was projected my feelings onto them.  

My gut reaction was to jump into action to do what ever I could to help. I was monitoring about five camps at the time and this included several hundred people.  The more food I handed out the more they wanted. The more I gave the more they needed. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that I was out of my league. On my own I am not going to be able to save the world.  I do not have the skills or the resources to make a significant difference to these people.  Quickly I discovered that I was being pulled away from my original mission to observe.

Trying to solve problems for others is NOT the best use of my gifts.  To be able to move forward and be productive I had no choice but to define who I am and accept who I am not.   I am not a social worker, an activist, a lawyer, a nonprofit, or a fundraiser and the list of who I am NOT goes on. Who I am is a visual storyteller and it is my job to simply record and tell this story about a time and place. Perhaps my photographs could affect people to take action but I need to stick to what I do best and not try to become someone who I am not.

My first lesson from STRUCTURE OUT OF CHAOS was detachment.  If I get too emotionally involved I become the story instead of a witness. If that happens my photographs are no longer honest and will become propaganda manipulating the viewer on how they should feel. The photographs would become a projection of my emotions. No one can learn without an open mind and it does not serve any good to react emotionally without knowing the facts.  From a detached state of being I dropped my emotions and concentrated solely on my mission to experience and not react to the story.

Producing a final presentation

Where do I start to Blog about a topic that has been on my mind for almost 20 years?  When I moved to Miami in January 1993 the problems between homeless people and the City of Miami was already happening. I was in major culture shock arriving from the Midwest to a city where English is not the primary language. Then to have homeless people trying to wash my windshield at every stop light and seeing communities of people living in plywood boxes certainly made me question what was going on in this world.

I have this strong personal curiosity.  What are the daily lives of these people like? What do their shacks look like on the inside? How do they feel about living like this?  I ask questions about people a lot in life. It is one thing to have a thought. It is another thing to be brave enough to go up and introduce yourself and start asking these questions.

At first I took friends along with me to these camps but after one trip none of them wanted to do it again.  Not even my boyfriend!  It would have been really helpful to have a Spanish translator but I learned to not allow the language barrier to hold me back. One thing I knew for sure no one had the passion that I had for this story. If I wanted to do this project than I had to be brave enough to do it alone, and I did.

Creating images was one task. Getting the story out to the public was been a whole new set of obstacles. People get excited to hear about my personal work until I use the buzz words “homeless people” or “sex offenders.” Once I do that the conversation drops like a lead balloon. 

I’m not here to tell you how to think or feel about our social abnormalities.  It is not my place to tell you what is right or wrong. I am simply here to share the journey I took and the viewers can make up their own minds about what to do with the information.

Through the process of this documentary I learned about myself. At first I wanted to help everyone. Only I am one person and those that I wanted to help by far out number me. So how do I help them?  I am not social worker. I am not homeless advocate. I am not a lawyer or a philanthropist.  I am not any of those people nor will I ever be in those roles. What I am is a visual artist with a story to tell. It is time to share the stories and to start a fresh dialogue about our humanity and topic of homelessness in America. 

Finishing this project will require funding. I would like to photograph more as the middle class increasingly swell into the ranks of the homeless. Or I can accept that what I have done is enough and try to get a large exhibition into some venues where the public can experience this imagery.

Please visit my webpage and look at my images with this story:

http://www.marylou.us/chaos.

I also have a professional presence on Facebook where I will list my Blog updates:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Photographer-MaryLou-Uttermohlen/201723200603

My professional work can be viewed at http://www.marylou.us