Utey (on the right) showed up with his buddy JR and they immediately started posing and mugging. They were actually into it. Though Utey asked to see all the images afterward and asked me not to print several because he said he looked too sad in them.
I heard that from more than one of the people I photographed.
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Jon's mom went to St. Mary's Academy as a girl, so Jon wore this jacket for her.
Each person who had their portraits made will get to come back next week and pick up two 5x7s. Some will keep the prints for themselves, others were going to send them to family. Jon is sending one to his mother.
He also trimmed his beard just for the day, though he still thought he looked too homeless.
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I spent the start of my day today downtown at St. André Bessette church lending my abilities as a photographer making portraits of homeless folk. I also made some new friends and heard some incredible stories.
The project was setup several years ago by a volunteer at the church. She went browsing Portland for photographers and found Newspace where she linked up with Jason Kaplan who has organized the portrait project and photographed for it ever since. Last year the Portland Tribune did an article on the work he has done and I saw it. Since I know Jason through Blue Moon and Newspace I asked if he needed another photographer this season. The project runs for four days and each day is picked up by a volunteer photographer. When there aren't enough photographers, Jason fills in himself. He told me a couple of years ago he photographed three of the four days.
Anyway, he got back in touch last week and told me he had Friday open, which happened to be my day off.
There honestly isn't much more I want to say about this, but I did want to share a few of the portraits.
I kicked off with Clarence because he was one of my first subjects and I hadn't really found my groove yet or gotten comfortable. As such, I didn't learn too much about Clarence. But he had an awesome scarf.
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Teliza greeted me with a friendly bongiorno. She still has family back in the boot of Italy but has never been to see them. When she left she gave me a big hug.
What you don't see in these portraits is all the clothes these people took off. Layers upon layers of coats and hats and bags and scarves.
I photographed at least one person who slept outside last night.
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The last one I will share is Rosemary. Despite being homeless Rosemary does blown glass art at PNCA. She hasn't been doing it for long but I told her I hoped to see her name around town at some point. She responded that it didn't matter if she ever had a show or sold a piece because she enjoyed blowing glass and that was all that really counted.
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