Street Community
While reporting on homelessness last year (also volunteering at a soup kitchen in Victoria) I developed a connection with the community of the streets. I intend to engage with them as I remain in this city, as I am passionate about the issues surrounding the homeless.
The rift that exists between the impoverished and the wealthy is astonishing -- as evidenced in downtown Victoria -- one of the wealthiest and most tourism-driven cities of Canada. Homelessness and poverty are on the rise, due to an inflated cost of living, the mounting housing crisis, and inaccessible and/or insufficient welfare allowance. There also exists a general lack of resources for families in crisis, the mentally infirm, and those with drug and alcohol addictions. Generalized class discrimination and oppressive authority figures perpetuate this situation within our city..
There is a general belief (that isn‘t true according to the latest statistics, but rings true from my experience), that the moderate climate of Victoria attracts homeless people from all over the country. Located in a sub-Mediterranean zone, Victorians enjoy some of the warmest weather in all of Canada. Also, the neighbouring city of Vancouver, the host of the 2010 Olympics, could be an important factor in the increase of homelessness: evictions related to the Olympics and “clean-ups” of the streets of Vancouver may oblige homeless people to hop a ferry to Victoria.
Not all of the street community are necessarily homeless -- artists, buskers, beggars, travellers, rebels, activists, preachers, eccentrics, drug addicts, gangsters, people with disabilities, social workers, (and so on) -- all of these groups compose the eclectic and fascinating portrait of our street community. I decided to focus my first assignment on some of these colourful characters.
Hoola-hoop
I randomly happened by Bastion square in historical downtown Victoria, when I saw a young woman perform a street show with her hoola-hoop. She attracted my attention and I took some pictures of her performance. It was a fun and easy shoot because the light was particularly intense, creating shadows on the ground and walls which formed interesting designs and figures. Besides, the dancer was gorgeous, photogenic and generous with her time. I wish I could have presented those pictures in colour because the different hues of gold, yellow, and orange imbued a magical warmth to the images. The dancer told me she is also a fire spinner, so we arranged another photo shoot at night, which would prove to be interesting.
Fiddle player
Photographing the fiddler from Quebec who ended up on the street was a little bit more challenging, because the background and lighting were not as striking. I tried to play with the reflections of the subject through the window in order to make the portrait a little more dynamic, but the results were a little disappointing. During the evening, I climbed to the fourth floor of a building to shoot the subject from the window. I tried different exposures and obtained effects and textures that I liked a little better. Moving people and cars create abstract figures whereas the main character is still distinct. When the musician saw the results on my camera, he came up with an existential question: “I have no doubt that I exist, but I do wonder if the world around me does exist?” Good laugh.
Enjoying a cigarette
I was chatting with a homeless man that I had met before and he asked me to take a picture that he could send to his brother (a nice black and white with smoky effects, film noir type). I decided to kill two birds with one stone and do my assignment at the same time. I thought it would be relevant in the context to also talk about those who actually don’t work. I simply photographed the man begging for a cigarette and eventually, smoking it. Omer didn’t like the fact that I was too close to my model. He commented that it would be better to have an idea of the surrounding. It’s true that when it comes to portraits, I tend to shoot people very close. Perhaps I do it
because it’s an easy method to produce a dramatic effect?
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