Riza was the first in my lifelong encounters with the homeless. Knowing him awakened a certain sense of compassion and immunized me against a certain instinctive suspicion of the homeless that arises unconsciously in the fast-paced life of big cities. People usually avoid anything that smells of poverty and misfortune. They keep away from anything that might test their self-proclaimed humanity... to stop for a second and show concern or not, to help or not to help! They prefer not to disturb their sleepy, comfortable conscience. The majority also judge them as lazy bums who are responsible for their own misfortune. People become experts at avoiding any contact with the homeless when passing by.
Of course, there are reasons as to why people look down on the homeless and make such an effort pretending they don’t see them. Like everything else, they generalize about people who live on the street. It is always their fault...like refugees, sex workers, getting raped, beaten up or cheated on by your spouse, etc, etc... stereotyping out of ignorance. With the homeless, there are other factors too. People presume them as dirty, unpredictable, insane and possibly violent. Looks are always more important than the character hidden under the worn out, unwashed and smelly clothes.
Sometimes all those myths are proven to be true in certain homeless individuals and people turn it into a generalization. I remember in my youth in Toronto, there was a homeless woman who whenever she spotted me on the street, would come and surprise me screaming violently in my face. She would come straight to me, stand in front of me in a military fashion, her face only a few centimeters away from mine and would scream her head off looking into my eyes. She smelled awful with unwashed clothes and greasy hair. She would shout incomprehensible things full of swear words and try to corner me ...I always managed to dodge her and escape. Why was I targeted, I don’t know, but to tell you the truth, she used to scare the hell out of me. To the point that, whenever I was in that area (it was where I used to do my darkroom printing), I would be on the lookout to make sure to hide if I spotted her. I really detested her and I am not ashamed to admit it. But that’s about it. The misery she made me feel, did not turn me into a missionary against the homeless. On the contrary, I had already started making visual stories on the homeless around those days, and I kept at it for long, long years.
Why is it that people prefer to look at the marginalized by stereotyping rather than looking at them individually? I am, by the way, not writing all this to portray myself as a faultless character. I am sometimes guilty of the same shortcoming, but I have worked very hard all my life to eliminate this mediocrity in myself. Life has to be with some kind of responsibility...responsibility to expand your mind and thinking. To respect others and be compassionate to their downs and outs. Most people are lazy to think this matter over and make an effort to understand. That’s how we end up with this kind of world where bias and discrimination become the norm...judging and hating are easier than embracing others the way they are.
That area around Bathurst and Queen in Toronto where I used to do my dark room work for almost two decades, is like a chest of memories related to the homeless. My own precious chest. It is there that I saw the other face of what they called Toronto the fast growing rich cosmopolitan city. It was the face of poverty and marginalization, full of the homeless...Canadian aboriginals who had become foreigners in their native land, poor immigrants with broken dreams and penniless teenagers running away from abusive and alcoholic parents. It was there, watching and photographing them, that I became a photographer. A photographer who learned the importance of telling stories about simple people, their struggles and aspirations, their victories and losses, their humility and humanity. I learned a bit more about the importance of human compassion. And I also learned that human integrity and respect accompany a person despite their poverty. It was there that I met sweet Julie, my aboriginal friend. May she rest in peace. There I met Ivan the Apparition, the elegant Count with broken immigrant dreams. There also I met Sebastien, Joey, Dorian and the gang. May they find the peace they were looking for, in Heaven.
