SET: (Un)Boring Assignments
Alexis Blackman plays in the street near the future site of Park Place Village, a new residential area for the chronically homeless. Her father, Greg Blackman, is opposed to the development. “I wouldn’t mind if they could tell me there wouldn’t be sexual offenders and violent offenders there,” he said, “I’m not a rich person; I can’t afford to move away like other people.”
Mobile Loaves and Fishes, an Austin charity group, had at long last secured a location to resettle the chronically homeless, including ex-felons and sex offenders. A noble cause that I personally find appealing–you can’t make problems disappear by ignoring them, especially if the problems are also people. The assignment was to shoot a photograph of the future site.
When I got to the site, there was nothing there. A packing depot, a few homes and a lot of trees. No bus station, no grocery store, not much of anything. I knocked on a door to ask where the new site would be, and ended up photographing Mr. Blackman’s children instead as they played on the street.
It’s true that the photograph doesn’t show you where the site would be located, but I think it tells the story better than a photograph of trees and some dirty asphalt. The site’s on the street, and the street is where Mr. Blackman says he’ll no longer allow his children to play.
It’s a conundrum: people have to live somewhere, but why here? The people who live here say it’s because it’s far away, poor, out of sight and without a neighborhood association that is able to legally protest. “Why do you have to put all the homeless people together anyway–wouldn’t it be better if they were spread out through the city?” I can’t say I disagree; I hope Austin is making n opportunity, not a ghetto.
Here’s the photo we actually ran. Not sure which one I like better.
Speaking of boring-sounding assignments, another notable one this month was photographing a “video game club.” Imagining people staring slack-jawed at monitor was bad enough; what’s worse was that the club wasn’t even meeting that week. I ended up going to a LAN party that just happened to have some of the club officers attending–I decided before I went inside that I wanted to take a photograph of faces, not televisions. Everyone knows what a television looks like; I wanted to show what fun looked like.
I softened them up by playing games with them for two hours. Like to say I held my own. Okay, I had a blast and it was a lot more fun than the standard hang-around-till-they-forgot-you-are-there. Then I got in real close, waited for a moment of high Pokemon drama and did some faces. The game controller is the obligatory “these people are not watching The Simpson’s” prop.
From left to right: Bryan Kuhn, Erin Lenth, Brad Stein, and Daniel Aguilar enjoy a round of Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Nintendo Wii.
I went ahead and shoe-horned in a few random photographs that won’t deserve their own entry. I have a lot of catching up to do.
Hi. My name is Jon, I am 25 years old and live in Austin, Tex. I graduated from 
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