Bound

2nd Avenue, East Village, on November 22, 2017

I made a set of images that I never thought I would make. This is Sheila, and my first sight of her, wrapped in scarves and old sweaters, was on St. Mark’s Place this past Tuesday night. She looked like a forgotten and somewhat forlorn elementary school aged child. She watched the parade that is every day St Mark’s and sat, looking to me like she’d been left out of a classmate’s birthday party. She is a homeless street dog, one of innumerable pit bull/pit mixes that I’ve seen accompanied by young street people. A dog to overlook and avoid and ignore. It never once occurred to me that one of these dogs might be cold, or lonely, or in need of a second thought. This one was somehow able to communicate a surprisingly stark form of unhappiness, clearly visible to me for the very first time.

A few portraits and street shots that reflect her life during a few minutes time on these cold, early winter days.

For me, these pictures are about love, and being bound by it, and how we can’t choose everything and everybody we find in our lives, and how we must accept at times what it is that we find we’ve wound up with. And that sometimes we love our captors, and wouldn’t leave, even if we suddenly could. These pictures are for me about being trapped, and never understanding that the love inside is actually a form of stealing liberty, use and abuse.