BEN MURPHY

TO ALL YOU TWEAKS, FREAKS, PUNKS AND TOMBROBBERS, THIS BELONGS TO

GODFATHER MESS WITH IT AND I LET THE CAYOTES SCATTER WHATS LEFT OF

YOUR BONES.

This sign, scrawled on cardboard, marks the home of “the godfather” a

one-legged Vietnam vet and one of the estimated 254,000 people who

experience homelessness in Los Angeles each year.

London-based artist Ben Murphy, took this image with a large format

camera at 6am on 26th November 2010 as part of this series looking at the

living spaces of America's homeless. The scale of the image allows the

viewer to see into the life of the godfather. His stuff, rope, tarps,

chairs, crutches, bags - the possessions of the dispossessed - forms a

perimeter about the site. A Do Not Enter sign marks the entrance.

Built on the side of a steep hill, the camp appears to be on the edge

of collapse. For all his warnings the godfather’s attempts at

settlement were short-lived. When Murphy returned to the site the next

day, it was gone. The local sheriffs’ office had cleared it away. One day

later, while he was driving around Beverly Hills’ exclusive

shopping streets, Murphy spotted the godfather panhandling,

his pit bull by his side, and what was left of his possessions in a cart.

All these pictures were taken at the margins of the mainstream and

most were take in California, the state perhaps most closely

associated with the American Dream, a state whose motto is Eureka - I have

found it.

The godfather’s camp was close to the Hollywood Bowl, which had just

hosted Bill Clinton’s Decade of Difference concert when the picture

was taken. Lady Gaga, Stevie Wonder, Usher, Bono and The Edge were in

attendance to celebrate a decade of the Clinton Global Initiative - a

charity that aims to “alleviate poverty, create a cleaner environment,

and increase access to health care and education.”

The Clinton link is just one of many ironies the images contain. The

both threatening and pastoral image of Untitled xx (Santa Barbara) with its red

flowers and trash was taken yards away from Oprah Winfrey’s estate. In

2009 the billionaire TV star’s show on the tent cities of Sacramento

briefly put  homelessness in the US on the national agenda. Some of

the homes of the people left after the TV crews were gone, and those

who arrived after, are pictured here.  They live close to the banks of

American River, hidden by woodland from the government workers who jog and mountain bike along the park trails of the Californian capital.

Murphy recorded the thrum of traffic  that is the constant soundtrack

to many of these people’s lives. It sounds like the white noise used

to filter out unwanted sounds. Another barrier between “us” and

“them”.

These pictures tell stories but they are not primarily narrative

images. They may remind viewers, sometimes starkly, of the pictures

that Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and others took during the Great

Depression. But the images have more in common with Paul Graham’s

American Night series or Philip Lorca

diCorcia’s Cuba photographs. They are carefully composed,

painstakingly shot. The political subtext remains but the image is not

documentary.

There are no people in these shots, a decision that allows the viewer

to inhabit the space they depict but also removes easy assumptions about the

image. These spaces were home to runaways, drug addicts, old people

made homeless by unemployment or crippling health care costs,

ex-prisoners, pedophiles, people with mental illness. Most are just

passing through, others are long-term homeless. By keeping them

literally out of the picture Murphy allows you to see into someone’s life. But he does not tell you whose.

Large format photography is time consuming and painstaking. the opposite of photojournalism. These

pictures were taken with heavy and expensive equipment that had to be

lugged through broken fences, beneath freeways and set up after

negotiation with vulnerable people, many with psychological and drug

problems. Sometimes the people who occupy these spaces gave their

permissions, sometimes they were not there to ask and Murphy set up

his equipment not knowing when they would return. A sense of that

difficulty remains in the image.

This is not the first time Murphy has tackled homelessness. In the ongoing

Riverbed series (now in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert museum) he photographed

the living spaces of a group of British settlers living in a dried-up

riverbed in Andalucia, Spain. There are echos of those pictures here

but the American photos are grimmer. The Spanish settlers made

decisions for political and social reasons. In the US, economics rule

and there is less of a safety net to catch those who fall, for

whatever reason. Unlike the Riverbed people many of the people here are desperate to rejoin conventional society.

“The pictures represent what I see as the consequences of a society

that celebrates individual success but has little or no sense of

community,” said Murphy.

--

Dominic Rushe

The Guardian

New York office

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/dominic-rushe

twitter.com/dominicru