Homeless in London

Quite often I'll revisit older images that are in my image library to see where I've been and where I want to go.  I'll recall the thoughts around taking the image and why it was important to me at the time; what captured my attention and how I saw the moment reveal itself.

This image which I call quite simply, "Homeless in London," was taken while I was a student at Syracuse University and participating their semester abroad program in London, England. It's been one of my most compelling shots of my career and shall forever be included in my book.

One of the truly disheartening aspects of living in such a large city, even in such a distinguished, older city, as London, is the number of homeless people living on the streets. The harsh reality is that homelessness exists in every city in every nation, and yet, as a society, we don't pay too much attention to it because it is so prevalent. We've become apathetic or desensitized to it.

I had been walking to the American Embassy one morning and happened upon two elderly gentlemen, obviously homeless, by the way they were sheltered from the elements, resting with blankets under the front alcove of a building, with nap sacks full of their personal belongings laying on the ground behind them. The two men weren't talking to each other. They were just sitting there, one staring at the ground, the other man looking at me. Being a street photographer (as most students are when they are in school studying photojournalism), I stopped to take a picture of the two men, and to my then surprise, they did not try to panhandle, nor run away. They sat there motionless, with dignity, and having the look in their eyes that simply revealed their desire to be significant.

For me, this image reveals dignity in the face of lowliness.