Blog

May 16, 2011

“Stereotypes limit the imagination, and thus limit potential.” John Hayes, Submerge.

As it turns out, it is not just the media that uses images of the homeless to represent an issue and interpret for us viewers what we are to believe about this population. This nameless, faceless, story-less population. These modern day untouchables. The lowest of our American caste system.

It is me, too. My own stereotypes, shaken when confronted with a real life story. A breathing story with a name, and a dream, and a tent discreetly hidden beneath the branches of an old pine in a city park in Denver.

There are six names, six faces, that I see in the early morning hours of sleep. Six kids that I wouldn’t have picked out of a line up. Six kids who have layers, back story I didn’t earn the right to hear, but can see in their eyes, in what they don’t say. As I reflect back, replay conversations, I hear more, understand more, know deeply my own ignorance and naivety. The story continues to unfold as I work through the layers in my mind, look at the images they took, the reflections they recorded.

I am a success story waiting to happen. I am a daughter. I am homesick. Betrayed. Powerful. Lost. Free.

And I? I am changed.

Because now I know Zac.

There is a face to the “issue” and it is reframed for me. And hopefully for others.

Stay tuned for the gallery of the images they took and the photo essay they created as a group.