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