Photo Drive
Black-and-white photographs of homeless people holding cardboard signs or sleeping on benches have become a cliché that photography professors dread. Such photographs, intended to tug at the viewer’s conscience, often have the unintended effect of objectifying their subjects, distilling complex human lives down to stereotypical images. But Kansas City Art Institute seniors Dylan Mortimer and Hayes Ford — whose project Can You Spare a Look? deals with homelessness — risk none of the academic scorn that the topic often inspires.
Rather than making homeless people the subjects of their artwork, the artists let homeless people depict their own world. The students went to Westport Methodist Church’s Brown Bag Lunch and handed out disposable cameras. The people who accepted cameras returned their exposed film to Mortimer and Ford, who converted the images to digital prints and put them on display at the Broadway Café and the Westport Coffeehouse.
“It seemed more genuine to have them do it,” says Mortimer, explaining that the project goes “beyond what homeless people look like. We actually get into what they see and what they think about.”
Images captured by a man named Mike include unusual, often beautiful shots of sunsets. The students describe Mike as quiet and unassuming; he initially declined their request to take photos, seeing the gesture as a handout he didn’t want. But when he realized that he would be doing the students a favor instead of the other way around, he changed his mind. “He went from being the most resistant [participant] to being the most excited,” Ford says. “He was the only one who got frustrated with the disposable camera and noticed that it’s hard to use because you can’t zoom in on things.”
Another participant, Curtis, is recognizable to Westport habitues as the guy who sits on the sidewalk outside Kelley’s. He accepted a camera happily. But when the students returned to pick it up, he hadn’t used any of the film. They asked him if he wanted to shoot a few photos before they took off with the camera, and he nonchalantly agreed, pointing the camera up and snapping at the sky. Curtis’ photos capture telephone poles, edges of rooftops and overhanging trees.
Mortimer and Ford also gave a camera to a man named Wes, whose colorful posse includes outspoken characters — with names like “Redhead” and “Papa Smurf” — who like to drink. “No one thought we’d get it back from those guys,” Mortimer says. Wes’ pictures are snapshots of himself and his friends having fun, putting their arms around each other and smiling or making faces at the camera, assuming the same poses most people adopt when taking photos for sentimental reasons. “We did buy him a drink when he gave the camera back,” Mortimer recalls. But, Ford adds, “that was just because it took a long time and we were so happy to finally get it.”
The duo’s original plan was to plaster Westport with the images they collected, putting them up in retail stores and less-edgy venues, but Mortimer and Ford decided that such merchants didn’t have the kind of display space that would do justice to the photographs. And Starbucks, Ford says, “didn’t really get it.”
