Desperately seeking...

Attention? Help? Peace from from whatever turmoil is haunting him?

OK - so the plan was once I'd the less-than-pleasant administrative stuff out of the way today, I was going to post some images from the recent weekend. Surfing, wine and some new friends. You know - fun stuff. But that'll come.

While digging through the paper-war I call my office, I heard a male screaming and yelling outside. Not necessarily an unusual thing in this neck of the woods, I left him to it and tried to concentrate on unravelling the Sanskrit-ian mystery that makes Excel spreadsheets operate. Not having any luck, I tracked out into the kitchen to make a cuppa - to find that the carry on outside was, well, still carrying on.

We've got a Wesley Mission in our neighbourhood, and as I said, it's not unusual to have vocal examples of how eclectic and varied our area can be, carried out underneath the kitchen window. At volume. But this time, the source of the noise was a middle aged male, ranting away to himself. I watched him for a while and as he tired of his yelled one-man dialogue, he fell his knees in the gutter, suddenly crying. The street once again was quiet. I don't think it was the first time in his life that this man was being ignored.

What to do? Well, I reached for my camera - I felt this could provide a photographic opportunity of interest. And it did - while sobbing and mumbling to himself he reached into a pocket and withdrew a stick of chalk. Carefully, thoughtfully and painfully eloquently he left six words inscribed on the road, temporary, until the next rainfall or passing street sweeper.

Should I feel good about this image? I'd be lying if I said I don't feel like I've taken advantage of him and his misfortune on some level, but that niggling itch of conscience has just given rise to a wee idea - but you'll have to watch this space. Admittedly in the grander scheme of things, it's not quite on the scale of the late South African photojournalist Kevin Taylor, who captured this Pulitzer Award winning image at a refugee camp , and hopefully won't have the same effect on me.

To read more about Kevin Taylor, his work and that of his 'band of brothers' I would definitely recommend reading The Bang Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War, by Greg Marinovich. Not a nice read, but an amazing one anyway.

And the six words?


Why don't you just kill me.

Enjoying the sun while he can...

The guy in the centre of the image is a local 'displaced person' - as far as I can tell, he doesn't have anywhere to live other than a homeless shelter round the corner from our apartment.
So it's no surprise that without the luxuries of heating, hot running water and oh I don't know, a roof, he makes the most of what he can get when he can get it.
The image was taken just as the sun was about to descend behind the city skyline, and the company I was with had just ventured into a nearby shop. The subject (too clinical? Guy? Bloke? Man?) - anyway - he spent maybe ten minutes that the girls were shopping picking up cigarette butts and rollie ends from the footpath and gutter, chasing the sun as it finished for the day.
I think he knows what he's doing isn't right, and there's a glimmer or of self-respect in there somewhere - it's that or he's right at the other end of the spectrum where he's the sole occupant of Planet ME. He doesn't look anyone in the eye, or acknowledge passers-by - he reaps enough tobacco from discarded butts, roll ups, and smokes - happy in his own mind that even if he has no roof, he has a cigarette to smoke.