This piece reflects on how marginalised or underrepresented groups could be badly portrayed and how being an insider might help combat this.  For the exercise I thought about the homeless people and in particular a group that is supported by a charity that one of my daughters works for – they deal with those who have been deemed too difficult to manage by the regular charities.

Typically, this group, on top of being homeless, will have mental challenges and probably at least one type of addiction.  These challenges often lead to violent behaviour which exacerbates the problems they face.

It would be very easy to tell a side to this story that shows the ‘trouble they might cause’ with violence, thefts etc.  This is the image that the public would more regularly see and therefore images showing these acts underway would simply serve as confirmation that they held the right view of what these people do and who they are.

My daughter sees a different side.  More often than not, the people will have had challenges at home, maybe witnessing or suffering abuse in some form or another and really having no choice in their own minds to leave home.  Nobody chooses to put themselves on the street.  From there, the need to survive drives all the other behaviours I have mentioned, the stealing to obtain money for food or to feed an addiction, drugs or alcohol to lose oneself.  The viscous circle is endless.

To photograph this group of people, I would aim to show their life through their eyes, not necessarily looking, by which I mean I would put them in the picture, but I would aim to show the circumstance in which they find themselves and how the crime or additions were a consequence of that, rather than being a reflection of who they inherently are.  I think that it would be easy to fall into a trap to aestheticize this into being all about the poverty but that would miss the point.  I think the real point to show would be their human side, how underneath their outward acts, there is a human being suffering anguish just like any other person would if they found themselves in that position.  The objective of the images would be to have the viewer understand that connection with themselves.

Wider Reflection

I think that final point above is possibly a key element for providing insight into any group.  After all, all groups of people are still people, whatever they are doing or whoever they are.  If that underlying humanness, that connection with the viewer, can be captured, I think (or hope maybe) that this would be enough to make the viewer stop and think about the group being portrayed and their perspective on life.