San Diego Unseen: An Urban Portrait
Gregory, June 2011
- Photo by Bear Guerra
In 2007, CityBeat kicked off a yearlong effort to put names, stories and faces to the city’s homeless population and find out the reasons people end up—and too often stay—on the street. We tried to sum it all up in our July 16, 2008, issue. Here’s an excerpt:
“Generally, people living on the street are folks for whom there was no safety net when they most needed it. A few talked about being bankrupted by medical expenses, such as Skip, who was in a serious car accident three decades ago at age 29. A musician with no health insurance, his medical bills ate up his savings and a permanent injury kept him from ever again working a steady job. A few female interviewees described being left in a bad financial state by a husband, boyfriend or male companion. Wheelchair-bound Sher’riee, for instance, who recently arrived in San Diego with her mentally handicapped son, said the money she’d saved up for an apartment was stolen by a guy she thought was her friend. When we met her, she was panhandling and saving up her disability checks in hopes of getting enough cash together to rent a small room.”
The venture was both frustrating and fulfilling. We heard from police and social-services providers who appreciated knowing a little more about the people they came in contact with. But, we also hoped to see more action—and less lip-service—from local decision makers. By 2008, there'd already been a few years of talk about a central-intake facility (it would be almost three years before the project was finally approved).
But there’s been progress. Through its Home Again project, the United Way has moved more than two-dozen people into housing that comes with supportive services. And, as of July 19, a campaign to end homelessness in Downtown San Diego had housed 94 people. Still, there are almost 1,000 people living on the street in Downtown alone.
When photographer Bear Guerra moved to San Diego last year from Austin, Texas, he immediately noticed the large homeless population.
“When we passed 30 people or so living under the C Street bridge as soon as we pulled into town, the project idea returned,” he says in an email.
The “idea” he’s referring to is one he had a few years ago to document Austin’s homeless through photographs and audio interviews. Several months after moving to San Diego, he met Jess Jollett, Omar Lopez and Rebecca Rauber and the four came up with the idea for an exhibit. Housed in a mobile structure designed by Lopez, viewers will walk through pathways that mimic city sidewalks along which will hang 40 portraits shot by Guerra. Some will have an audio of the person’s oral history, as told to Jollett, that will play when the viewer walks by.
“My goal with these portraits was to strip everything away except for the human being in the photo so that viewers can look into that person’s eyes and see themselves, or their mother, or brother, or friend,” Guerra says.
The exhibit was selected to appear at the San Diego Contemporary Art Fair, which runs Sept. 1 through 4, and the group plans to also take it around to schools, vacant lots, parks and galleries. (For information on a July 28 fundraiser for the project—CityBeat’s a media sponsor—click here.) The goal, Jollett says, is to encourage people to think differently about homelessness and see the individual, not the group.
“We believe this simple shift in perspective could help to begin a political change, where this population is no longer ignored, stigmatized, harassed, and kept in a cycle where success is nearly impossible.”
Leamore about the (In)visible Project at in-visible-project.org.
