I have never really given much thought as to how my images may be perceived by others, as I generally work completely from instinct and hope that I’m somehow reflecting the time accurately. I feel immense pleasure when I manage to get a few that do justice, but I have a lot of failures. What do I photograph and what do I leave out? All of it is important to depict scenes and complex, intricate lives with total transparency and urgency. But when telling stories sometimes you have to leave a lot out that matters. Why? And what to leave out? Is it ok to eliminate information or images that are just too hard to look at, too personal? Is the subject matter too polarizing? Will someone get upset, will the work be categorized as too difficult, thereby increasing the likelihood that fewer people will be exposed to the images and story? I find that there’s tremendous urgency in these images, because more people are finding themselves lost on the street, and many of them seem to be there because of an inability to be diagnosed or treated for mental illness and developmental disabilities.
How do I say that Little Bit gave up smoking K2 for nearly two joyous months only to completely relapse, that she now has a room in a managed living situation and doesn’t have to sleep on the street, but that her intense addiction is jeopardizing her placement? That her mental illness is intensifying and preventing family from even the most basic knowledge of her status and location? That the abscess on her leg may end her life and result in another amputation because she is terrified of the hospital? That when she does go to the hospital she is often left feeling degraded by condescending attitudes and dismissive, callous commentary by hospital staff about her lifestyle, staff that should understand the mental health complexities and resulting disabilities that incapacitate so many people living on the street? Do people really want to know about the episodes of copious, uncontrollable vomiting in public places that K2 ingestion causes? The horrible weight loss? The head lice, chronic and entrenched, whose activity on her scalp elicit horrifying hallucinations brought on by the combination of heroin, meth and K2? I’m debating even now as I write this….should I clean this up?
Should I say that we are all responsible for the mental health crisis in the United States and the travesty on our streets is because we don’t really want to know? We have completely discarded a segment of the population that is unable to exhibit basic self care, grappling blindly with disability that cripples insight and the execution of the most simple life plan.
Little Bit has a family that cares about her deeply, loves her and misses her. She does not have to be outdoors, or in a shelter. She is the victim of a society that does not truly understand the depth of despair that she suffers each day as a result of mental illness, or the desperation of families unable to secure basic services to help children and adolescents at risk. Early interventions that should be easily accessible to all people regardless of income are in fact nonexistent, or very nearly so.
I believe more people want to feel and understand these multi-layered stories and that the number of people who want more are vastly underestimated. That’s a problem, a really huge one, because we desperately need our media to reflect the reality of our times. It’s hard for photographers to be simultaneously politically correct, honest, unbiased and fearless if we have to worry about keeping things palatable and suited to a general audience, a vast miscalculation that undermines the viewer’s ability to gain a more complex, layered appreciation of life in the United States and elsewhere. A general audience that has a genuine desire for knowledge and wants very much to be allowed to make up their own minds about what they see and how to feel about what is presented.
I’m often completely immersed in the visual juxtapositions, elements of physicality in the images that bring meaningful clarity and irony or humor or dissonance together in some way. Whatever I’m thinking or seeing at the time. What’s right in front of me, immediate and compelling. I never think about how to sell or market my images, and that’s a problem. I don’t consider anything other than the mechanics involved with creating the images. Lately I find that I’m saving pictures, waiting longer periods before showing them, hanging on and retaining privacy in order to better understand what it is that I’m trying to say.
Images from Little Bit’s world.
I think that I’m able to photograph people because, for whatever reason, they are a version of themselves in the moment that is accepted gratefully, carefully and completely noted and preserved in a picture. Whether it’s a beautiful image or a rough one….it works for us both similarly I think. Particular people seem to bring about my best work because of the way they make me feel about myself as I’m working. Some of my worst pictures happened because I felt bad about myself in the circumstances I was in while attempting to make photographs. Huge fails that stay with me for absurdly long periods.
Who I am when I’m with the people I photograph stays with me and is hugely beneficial on days when I don’t like myself or I’m burdened with something I can’t change….or I don’t make a picture that’s everything it could have been.
What version of someone do I find when immersed in a long term essay or series? I don’t like describing my work in this somewhat detached manner, it’s so much more than a photo “project” and I never think in these terms, but I do find the unfortunate necessity to speak at times using these terms. It’s not really possible for me to identify my work or images in this manner, and describing my pictures as a project is not really satisfying or accurate.
Versions of Little Bit…..who she is and how she is being summarized when she is photographed is never the same twice.
The nature of the person I encounter has changed over the few years I’ve been photographing Little Bit. She is her best version sometimes and on the days when she is far from her best she is increasingly unknown, unseen and impossible to reach.
I think more and more about the people I’ve seen around 34th Street who were once solidly fixed to a spot, but who have since disappeared. Something will remind me of a face and I’ll have the memory briefly and then I move on, forgetting completely as I move down 34th Street looking for a picture.
SUZANNE STEIN PHOTOGRAPHY 