ANGER: A large portion of my job consists of walking throughout downtown New Brunswick, giving various pieces of information to the downtown retailers & restaurants. Throughout the last year, I have come across many homeless people or people that are experiencing some sort of poverty. In my daily journeys in and around the area, I would usually see this particular gentleman standing on the sidewalk and quietly asking for money. Unlike his peers, he would never act out with brash words or anger when people continuously ignored him and acted as if he was a waste of space. He would just patiently stand there and keep trying. On this particular day that I took this photo, May 20th, I was walking around the downtown with a camera to take photos of a new business in town (another part of my job) and happened to notice him from afar. I was instantly struck with the fact that he was sitting. Not only was he sitting, but he also looked like he was praying. His shoulders sagged in defeat and he was not pushing forward with his usual quiet and steady determination. Why does this anger me? Because I want to know what brought him to this point! What horrible things did he experience or what people hurt him or what governmental red tape caused him to end up in this pool of defeat? His usual unoffensive and kind attitude in the worst of situations leads me to believe that he is not an all-around evil person that got himself into this predicament all by himself. With the current economic climate, there are more and more people just like him out on the streets. To me, that is not something that is entirely the fault of each individual and if anyone can stop for one moment in their busy lives and just give thought to how easily it could be them, then they should be able to understand these words of question for what our world holds as priority and how badly these priorities need to be restructured to help the common man.
SADNESS: This photo was taken about 10 years ago, when I was 14 or 15 years old. It's one of the very few photos that I have of the four of us together: my Mom, Dad, and brother. It makes me sad for several reasons, one of which being that this is one of the few photos that you'll see of us as a whole unit, something that we rarely were during my whole life. I wish I could go back to this time when everyone was fairly happy and healthy and full of more purpose than you knew what to do with. None of us had become weighed down with the numerous stressors of life and reacted to these stressors to cause even more stress, and no one had contemplated not having hope for a better future as a unit or as an individual. Each of us was gaining a good grip on who we wanted to be and what we wanted to do, and I never would've thought that we would be as separate and troubled as we are now. Some of us have accepted it, and some of us haven't. Either way, it's still a sadness that will never totally cease to exist.
ANGER: A large portion of my job consists of walking throughout downtown New Brunswick, giving various pieces of information to the downtown retailers & restaurants. Throughout the last year, I have come across many homeless people or people that are experiencing some sort of poverty. In my daily journeys in and around the area, I would usually see this particular gentleman standing on the sidewalk and quietly asking for money. Unlike his peers, he would never act out with brash words or anger when people continuously ignored him and acted as if he was a waste of space. He would just patiently stand there and keep trying. On this particular day that I took this photo, May 20th, I was walking around the downtown with a camera to take photos of a new business in town (another part of my job) and happened to notice him from afar. I was instantly struck with the fact that he was sitting. Not only was he sitting, but he also looked like he was praying. His shoulders sagged in defeat and he was not pushing forward with his usual quiet and steady determination. Why does this anger me? Because I want to know what brought him to this point! What horrible things did he experience or what people hurt him or what governmental red tape caused him to end up in this pool of defeat? His usual unoffensive and kind attitude in the worst of situations leads me to believe that he is not an all-around evil person that got himself into this predicament all by himself. With the current economic climate, there are more and more people just like him out on the streets. To me, that is not something that is entirely the fault of each individual and if anyone can stop for one moment in their busy lives and just give thought to how easily it could be them, then they should be able to understand these words of question for what our world holds as priority and how badly these priorities need to be restructured to help the common man.
SADNESS: This photo was taken about 10 years ago, when I was 14 or 15 years old. It's one of the very few photos that I have of the four of us together: my Mom, Dad, and brother. It makes me sad for several reasons, one of which being that this is one of the few photos that you'll see of us as a whole unit, something that we rarely were during my whole life. I wish I could go back to this time when everyone was fairly happy and healthy and full of more purpose than you knew what to do with. None of us had become weighed down with the numerous stressors of life and reacted to these stressors to cause even more stress, and no one had contemplated not having hope for a better future as a unit or as an individual. Each of us was gaining a good grip on who we wanted to be and what we wanted to do, and I never would've thought that we would be as separate and troubled as we are now. Some of us have accepted it, and some of us haven't. Either way, it's still a sadness that will never totally cease to exist.
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