Unit RPHC4002 - Waste Research

As I am taking photos of homeless people for my Waste project, I wanted to use my research to see how photographers capture the feelings of the homeless person through their shots. What seemed to come across with the work of the photographers I looked at was that they all take close ups. The focus on the eyes seems to capture the despair and desolation within the person.

I looked at Steve Huff whose images told exactly of the despair felt by this group of people. The cut to the face and the lack of care to the teeth portray the effects of homelessness. 

Lee Jeffries is another photographer of the homeless. He likes to connect with his subjects by gaining their trust first and also shows their despair through the eyes. He feels this is the most important element in telling the story of the image.  He does enhance his photos afterwards to achieve even more impact. He said in an interview: “I process, predominately through dodge and burn, to develop the mood of the eyes. It’s the eyes that attracted me to take the photograph in the first place and this is always the starting point for the emotional element of the image. I process with light and shadow in an almost religious way.”

All the images taken show similarities, the blackened skin where they have not been able to wash, overgrown facial hair, and quite often injuries of one type or another. All use close ups to achieve the effect they want to portray. The majority of the photographers I looked at use black and white film. I feel this has the effect of portraying the darker world they inhabit.

The similarities of dirty skin and overgrown facial hair are shown again in the following image by Michael Pharoah, but as he has used a colour film for this shot, it seems to give a softer feel to the image. 

Doing this research has made me realise how important it is going to be that some my shots need to be close up to get across the true feeling of  the desolation and waste of the subject’s life. I need to show the person’s emotions through their eyes in the same way of the photographers I looked at in my research.